


Baker's Pie

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Fucked Up Relationship, Lucas Baker is his own warning, Physical Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slurs, Verbal Abuse, he's my favorite Baker, if you can't tell by this piece of shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-26 16:18:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9910865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: Lucas always wanted a girlfriend, but relationships are too much work sometimes. It'd be cool if he could just make one, you know?*I'm covering all my bases with the tags. Resident Evil 7 is fucked up and Lucas is probably the worst Baker so...fair warning. There's no explicit non-con, but it cuts close.





	1. Chapter 1

‘She ain't hatched yet.’

Muffled and manic - that twanging timber of the son's voice surrounded her in the darkness, penetrating the steel around her on all corners of her tomb. There came a loud bang, a growl, and an animal click then a purr and more laughter. Every sound was amplified by the metal surrounding her. Her head throbbed like a rotten hangover and her skin bristled with goosebumps until it felt like her flesh had shrunk, tightening over fat and muscle.

‘Whaddya say we do with this one, Pa?’

Another bang of steel on steel, vibrating her brains until it felt like they were leaking out her snotty nose. She’d seen that happen in old 80s movies - how the atmosphere or supernatural forces...or whatever would squeeze the brain and blood out of people's eyes and noses and ears. The idea of that happening to her nearly made her heart stop. What a way to go.

‘If she don't hatch by supper time then do what you want with ‘er. That otha’ one’s commin’ along nicely.’

‘O’boy!-o’boy, are we gonna have some fun, princess! Just you and me.’

The sudden, rhythmic tapping on her coffin made her heart stutter back to life. Fear-sweat ran down the side of her temples and more fresh tears dribbled into her ears. After however many days she'd been stuck in here she would have thought the terror would have killed her by now. Every second was another second of pain, of brutal existence and worse of all it was all drenched in doubt. She wanted to die. She didn't want to turn into one of those...of those...monsters. Real-life monsters.

Of all the movie cliche shit that could happen to her on a fucking road trip, she didn't even want to go on. She didn't want to live anymore...

As laughter echoed around her she squeezed her eyes shut, praying to a God she wasn't sure existed that they'd do the merciful thing and let her die. They didn’t, though. They wouldn’t and God didn't exist.

\----------------------------------------

“Wakey wakey! It's time to get movin’, princess.” He pulled her out of her drawer - the rank stick of skin to the metal pulled at her raw flesh.

"Fuck, you smell worse than the dead ones."

An abrupt wave of pale light cut like a blade behind her eyes and even squeezing her arms over her face did nothing to cloak her from the blinding pain in her head. That fuckin’ psycho laughed at her, nudging her in the ribs with something cold and hard, hopping back on his heels with a giggle when she groaned in pain. She curled over on her side whimpering and for the first time in days felt the air on her skin as the rattle of an AC unit kicked on; blasting air on her sweaty hide. It was freezing and she loved it - loved it in a way one could only love something so mundane when everything else was pain and chaos.

“Lookey here, girl. You wanna take a hot shower? Maybe get that there smile of yours stitched back up? Yeah? Well then get movin’! I ain’t got all day to babysit you.” 

He hummed and then laughed as she hissed under another hard poking stab to her spine. When she only shivered in response and curled further into herself he hollered for her to ‘move that scrawny ass!’ of hers. Even if she wanted to follow his belligerent orders she couldn't move out of her ball. Somehow it felt safe tucked away like this as if nothing existed outside herself. If only if were so simple, she thought desperately, sobbing and shivering. 

When she didn't move after another hard jab to her ribs, she felt his fingers thread around the knots in her ratty hair. He dragged her off the slab like a dense piece of meat, crooning to himself. 

She fell like dead weight, her cheekbone slapping on the cold cement floor. It stung. Everything hurt but she was too scared to focus on it. She'd almost forgotten about the gash running from the side of her lip to her jawbone. It had already scabbed and welded but one disastrous scream and it'd split open again. All she allowed herself was a sick groan of pain as she was drawn up to her knees. For the first time since dinner, she saw the son - the one that hadn’t blinked the whole time she'd been strapped to the dining chair with Sam and Lydia flanking her; crying and pleading to 'just let us go home'. He reminded her of the stereotypical guy the college warned them about in their PSA posters and though she'd had more to worry about than his weird eyes watching her, it haunted her as she'd laid in her coffin more than the other atrocities she'd witnessed since then. 

In the fetid light of the fluorescents, he looked greasy and diseased - like someone strung out on meth in dire need of a shower. Though, to be fair, she knew she didn't look much better. Strangely enough, he smelt nicer than she did. That, however, didn't mean he didn't look like the kind of person who'd eat her...which was a high possibility given what his mother fed them all.

“Now,” he muttered, almost quietly, “you listen up real close, princess.”

She blinked away the tears, finally seeing him clearly and listened. Those cruel fingers in her hair squeezed and she felt another trickle of moisture slide down the side of her nose. Another dumb fucking tear. He eyed the tear with parted lips and bared teeth as it journeyed off her chin, seemingly fascinated by it. Or maybe it was his way of intimidating her, which there was little use in at that point. She was sure by then she couldn’t feel any smaller or vulnerable than she did now.

He licked his lower lip and smiled a sinister half-smile, “You're gonna see some freaky shit on our way to my place, but don't worry, princess, they ain't gonna hurt ya…not unless you get on my bad side. You hear me?”

Pain blossomed on the right side of her face as she parted her lips. She could hear the skin separating. It had fused from the days doing nothing but sleeping and crying and lying in wait, but now she couldn’t stop her lower lip from quivering and it was pulling at the fragile clotting of blood. Yes, she tried to say and when she couldn't the first time he gave her a hard shake, scalp on fire and hair follicles breaking and finally out came a tiny, hopeless… “...yes.”

“Gooood! Let's get you cleaned up then. I’ve got some party favors to set up and I need a date that smells better than a red tide in summer.”

She managed the walk on her feet halfway down the first hallway, after her knees buckled for the second time the man simply huffed and dragged her along the floor. The old scabs on her kneecaps - first made when she'd tried to crawl across broken dishes and forks towards an escape hatch outside their kitchen - opened again as they broke on the floor speeding underneath her. 

Inhuman, she knew he was; knew they all were and maybe she was as well now, but the strength he showed as he hefted her up over his shoulder surprised her. More and more she wondered how it was possible to be more and more frightened. There seemed no end to it. 

And she saw horrors as he carried her through the damp hallways. There were dark open doorways with black monsters shuffling drunkenly back and forth. Bathtubs gurgled and further away she heard gleeful laughter like something out of a grindhouse film. The rev of a chainsaw. The loud, male screams of another victim. 

It was wrong of her, but she took solace in knowing the sounds weren't female. Maybe Sam and Lydia actually escaped...maybe they were sending help. Hope tried to root in her gut but it died at the sound of another sinking scream.

Let him just kill her, please. 

Don't let him do what she feared he would. She'd never been raped - never been in a situation where she feared she would be. That one time Sam had asked her to go to a prevention class she'd politely declined and went back to watching tv like only a well-protected girl would. What did she do?! Was that even her biggest concern given that she was surrounded by horror show creatures? It wasn't the worst that could happen to her but the implication of rape scared her nonetheless. Had he already gotten to Sam, to Lydia? Or were they both monsters now? Had they been the ones she'd glimpsed shuffling in that dark room?

Poor Sam. Poor Lydia. Poor her. 

Slung over this man's shoulder, so bony and cold she started to cry again. Everything hurt - her chest ached with fat fear and she prayed and prayed he would just throw her down and crunch her skull in…

“Man, I know I said you got a scrawny ass earlier but damn! You got some meat on yer bones. Better you come with me. My Mama might’ve cooked you up and where’d I have gotten a girlfriend then?!”

Girlfriend - that word turned the hard pumping blood in her veins to cold jelly. He was going to rape her. He was gonna keep her around like some beaten sex slave and with that sudden realization, she decided that turning into a monster sounded preferable. Dear God, please, she prayed out loud, “Oh god, p-p-pl-ease…”

“Oh,” he mocked her, mimicking her desperate sound as he bounced her up and down over his shoulder like a giddy child. “Hush now, princess. You'll feel better in’a couple hours. Just you wait!”

She wouldn't. There was no feeling better after this. It was either more suffering or the blissful release of death. Despite the pain and the horror, she knew it was only going to get worse from here. She tried, goddamnit she tried, but she couldn't expend any appreciate for calm before the storm.

As the concrete walls became wallpaper, became dark, depthless brush filled with spider-like boogeyman she only felt more and numb inside. Good, she smiled, small and sad, feeling nothing was a mercy if all she'd feel from now on was more and all of the same as before…

\----------------------------------------

Lucas was his name, as he told her over and over, expecting her to repeat it with a split face and not mispronounce it. She managed it a few times but after that, the blood started leaking into her mouth again, running warmly down her jaw and neck until it started staining her shirt. 

"Lew...lew-cuss..." she said again when he pushed at her shoulder, egging her on. He was crouched down between her thighs as she sat shaking on the big soft chair at the center of the room. The cushions reeked of body odor and spilled sugary soda, despite that it was one of those old smells you'd find in a well-worn home; comforting almost.

"Ah, shit, yer getting blood all over the place."

Her fingers shivered as she raised them up to her cheek, thinking to wipe the blood away, but he slapped her hand away, reaching his cold fingers around her throat. Lucas fixed the problem by gripping the collar on her shirt and ripping the front down the middle; buttons flying and pinging off the floor boards. The ice cold air flooded between her breasts, tightening her nipples. She shrieked, twisted and threw down on the floor as if to gallop like some fucking animal on all fours out of this crazy hellhole. She didn’t even get her hand off the armrest before his hands were all over her, finally hooking a finger in her bra strap, yanking her back.

“Hey, now! Hey, girl. Don’t worry! I’ve got some new clothes for you. Just hold still.”

“P-please,” it was all she could say - as though he’d see reason if she could beg him in just the right tone. It didn’t work. Lucas just grinned, his eyes blooming wide and glassy as he crouched down beside her, turning her almost gently by the shoulders to face him fully. Every hard breath hurt her ribs, burned her lungs. She couldn't get enough air no matter how deep or fast she breathed. The terror she felt just by looking up at him was intensely hellish.

“...please,” she tried again but got no response except his thumbs rubbing in the dirt and sweat tacked over her skin. He stared at her; unblinking and kept on staring until she started to shake, her lower lip quivering so hard her jaw began to throb.

“You better start payin’ reee-al close attention, ‘cause I ain’t gonna say it more than once. If you keep tryin’ to run off I’m gonna eat you. Got it?”

Yes, she nodded frantically.

She'd been all about death over rape earlier but faced with the prospect of being eaten alive changed her outlook. 

Swallowing back her next ‘please’, she watched him as he smiled at her. Those urgent eyes, in dire need of closing, slid down to her breasts, observing more so than ogling.

Maybe he wouldn't rape her, she thought, not for the first time since he’d locked them both in this...place of his. He might have some other intentions, but then his palms started sliding around her back, fiddling with the clasp between her shoulder blades. The hook released and she accepted what was to come as she closed her eyes, another tear leaking out as Lucas - a man made for hell - removed her bra. It wasn’t just a piece of clothing at that point. It was like having a shield ripped away...like a bullet sliding through kevlar. Shock and a strange sense of betrayal filled her chest. 

“Hoo, boy...look at those titties!” He shouted and tease and made a perverse sound in the back of his throat like a man with a great view of something delicious. It made her feel sick. 

“I say, princess. Would’a been a real shame for these to go to waste on those shamblin' fucks.”

She hovered there on the floor, wincing as he removed the rest of her clothes. He took great enjoyment in snapping her panties at her hip, watching her flinch and gasp between her tears. After a dozen hard snaps the strip of skin started to turn red and only when she winced did he tug them down her hips. 

Through blurry tears she watched him fling the stained cotton across the floor, laughing under his breath, “Won’t be needin’ those anymore.”

So convinced she was that he was going to rape her, that she almost felt slighted when he just patted her thigh and left her there on the floor; naked and cold and heart palpitating.

Frozen there on the ground, she stared dead ahead, listening to his footsteps padding around the room, out of the room and then after a few minutes back beside her. Lucas crouched down near her, flicking some hair out of her face before giving her what he may have thought was a winning smile but was, in fact, a monstrous grin. Coupled with the expanding whites of his eyes it was enough to make her nails curl into the cement floor, desperate to flee. 

Maybe being eaten wasn’t as bad as she thought...maybe it was the better option compared to whatever he had planned for her. Her lower lip shook again, frantic enough that the corner of her mouth split. Fresh pain throbbed in her cheek, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his - too afraid of what he’d do if she looked away.

Her heart leaped into her throat as he pulled at her chin, brushing a thumb over her bloody lower lip carefully, staring at the ruined flesh. And then - suddenly and without warning he straddled her, pressing her chest down to the floor under his weight with the heel of his hand pinning her neck to the floor. She screamed as he peeled her mouth open, splitting the cut flesh. Blood poured into her mouth, gurgling her shrieks of pain - the heat of torn flesh and of the cold air on the exposed muscle made her dizzy. 

He growled, huffed and snarled, “Shut up! I said shut it, you dumb bitch! God! Why you all gotta be so fucking loud?!” 

Lucas - patience drained - twisted his wrist at her throat and choked her. For a moment it felt like her head was going to explode but then the darkness came and holy hell was it a blessing that she greeted eagerly.

But because there was no luck left for her, she woke up mere minutes later, between consciousness and unconsciousness - that thin line of delirium. The skin of her cheek tugged hard, released and repeated. 

Her eyes fluttered open and through a cloudy eye, she saw Lucas suck on his lips, watching with wide eyes as he stitched her flesh back together. She didn’t feel anything, just the pressure and hard tugs as he fed the needle and plastic threading. Beside her head, she could just make out the fuzzy shape of a syringe. Numbing agent?...but no, he wasn’t the sort of man to care about something like that…unless, of course, it made his job easier, which she realized, in this case, it very much did. 

“Yeah, just a lil’ bit more!” he told her, realizing she'd finally woken up. He sucked on his teeth and grinned, chuckling.

Lucas twisted at the hips and pulled a bloody rag off the floor, swiping at the side of her face. The cotton came away stained black and red. God have mercy, she prayed again...why was it black?

“I’m yer God now, princess.”

No, he wasn't...no one was.

She winced as he tied a knot in the plastic threading under her cheekbone, his fingers so jittery and aimless she wondered what she looked like now...not that it mattered. She’d be dead soon she hoped, or she’d be whatever Lucas wanted her to be and it seemed he had no problem with the sorry state of her face. 

“There we go! Good as new,” he told her; high pitched and half crazed. She had but a second to blink up at him, let down her guard before he was twisting a cap off a green bottle and pouring the rank slick liquid over her face. It burned in her eyes and turned the heat around her stitches cold. Some of it slipped down her throat, making her tongue feel dead against the backs of her teeth. A few seconds later the pain faded...but she had little time to relish it before Lucas was pulling her up, no patience left to wait for her to get to her feet on her own.

He seemed to enjoy dragging her across the floor, anyway.

Halfway across the room, she shrieked as pain tore into her skin. A loose nail in the boards snagging on her hip, tearing flesh. The pace at which he dragged her never faltered even as she clawed at his wrist, begging him, “Stop! Stop, please!”

Those pleas fell on deaf ears just as she knew they would, but it didn't stop her from screaming and pleading all the same. 

Finally, he threw her in a bathtub that reeked of old blood and immediately a spray of ice cold water rained over her. It took her breath away, stopped her screaming. She panted and stared in wide-eyed horror through a curtain of hair as Lucas knelt down in front of her. He bared his teeth in a wide manic smile. 

Something strange happened to her vision as he wrung his hands around the rim of the tub, bouncing on his heels. She could suddenly see every pore on his face, each vein hiding under his thin pale skin...the singular hair follicles grown in on his jaw, chin, and upper lip. Those dilated pupils alone in a sea of white glass mimicked her own. He pulled her close to him, his tacky palms going soft under the water, pressed tight around her face. Her lips pursed together as he squeezed her cheeks like her grandmother used to do when she was eleven...

“You!” He grinned wider; eyes bulging further, “are gonna make a great girlfriend.”

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a bunch of this written. I got inspired while watching Let's Plays while I was under the weather for a couple of days. I've already played the game twice and Lucas is only upstaged by some of the crazy shit Jack does, but I like the white trash piece of shit so hopefully someone else will enjoy this. Let me know what you think in the comments, if you have the times and Thanks! for reading.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the awesome comments on that first chapter. I wasn't sure there'd be a market for Lucas Baker but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one interested in the maniac. Warnings for noncon elements and slight gore ahead. Enjoy!

“What’s yer name, princess?”

“Ah-” she started immediately, but he ‘tsked’ her with three clicks of his tongue, swaying a scabbed finger in her face. She went cross-eyed staring at it, hoping he didn’t put it to her lips. The sight of the healing flesh made her stomach roll.

“Nu-uh’uh,” he enunciated and grinned. She was sitting on the edge of his bed with her arms crossed over her breasts. He didn't seem too concerned with her covering herself up and he found something wrong with her response? What did she say then? He swayed his head from side to side; expectant but not impatient.

“Tell me yer ‘real’ name."

She was at a loss for a good minute and a half - she knew the exact time because the wall clock above his head told her so. His request didn't click until he pursed his lips, mouthing syllables to her like someone would a child.

“Purr…” she attempted, sweating as her heart fluttered in unsure fear. His lips parted, teeth touching, tongue pressing against the backs of them and a soft hiss leaked out between those white tusks of his.

“Princess,” she guessed, swallowing the word like a shot of Everclear.

Lucas blinked and licked his lips as a slow, pleased smile spread across his face. She was right?! Yes, she was. Her name was Princess...for fuck’s sake. She felt the moniker echo between her ears like a bad internal monolog until it got so loud she realized it was Lucas chanting it.

“Princess, princess, princeh-eh-ess! Forget about your old dumb name and embrace the new you! Hordes of abominations need rulers, right? I'll be Lucas and you'll be my, sweet little princess.”

“But I-” she would have said something stupid had he let her finish. He'd have hit her or done something else anyway, but the hands he wrapped around her throat, squeezing the cords and arteries in her neck, was still alarming. Should have anticipated it, but she didn't. Her wild fingers sought out the flare of his palms crunching around her throat; clawing at his skin in an urgent attempt to breathe.

“Say it,” he snarled, suddenly much less giddy and more sinister; dark and pressing and threatening, “Say your name!”

“...rinssses,” was all she could manage. It was enough, though, thankfully. The pressure lifted up off her neck and the hard line of his mouth curled up. Lucas chuckled under his breath as he stroked behind her ears with his thumbs. The dichotomy of this action over the last made her tremble. She'd always been a creature of habit; of routine. Each and every day since she'd moved out of her parent's house in Ohio had been predictable and she loved it. He wasn't - Lucas was unpredictable and violent and just looking at his hot, scheming eyes terrified her. She had a better chance of reversing their situation than anticipating his next move.

“There now, that wasn’t soo hard now was it?”

“No,” she whispered, watching the way the flickering lights above their heads made his eyes flash. She swallowed past the pain in her throat and gasped, “It wasn't hard at all.”

\----------------------------------------

“No. No. No-no!" Lucas complained, kicking his feet at the tv like a petulant child, "They only get the key if they stick their hand in the shitter. It ain't fair for ‘em to get to the end without some possible, and very likely, sepsis. Not that he’s gonna get to the end.”

“...because of the bomb?” She asked carefully.

“Exactly! Birthday boy’s gonna get blown! and I don't mean I'm gonna send you in there either. No fuckin’ way."

She watched the gears turning in his head before he kicked his sneakers up on the tv set, rolling his grinning, sweaty face towards her. "He's gonna go,” Lucas paused for added effect before he raised his fists, flashing his fingers and shouting, “BOOM!”

Princess, sat at the table with an ice pack on her face, watching his feet slap back on the floor as he scooted back in his lazy boy recliner, remote control gripped in his hand. The television set flickered brightly all over him.

He looked more like a zombie in front of a screen than he did anywhere else. She didn't know what he was watching, the angle didn't favor her, but stacks of VHS tapes were littered around his chair and the television set. Some were homemade labels and others were old movies she didn't recognize.

His fingers twitched around the remote; bloody, flaked fingers.

He’d just removed her stitches even though they weren't ready to come out yet...not even close to ready. The messy prickles of stitches rested in a bowl of pink water in front of her. It would have turned her stomach but aside from the throbbing in her face she didn't feel much discomfort. Things had...changed after her shower a few days prior. Things were different now.

She hissed as she removed the pack of ice, looking at the clear plastic, smeared with streaks of blood, mindlessly. Almost immediately her face started throbbing again. It didn't make sense for him to give her the ice pack as if he cared for her comfort, but she wasn't going to question it. The frigid sensation numbed the residual heat and pressure. It felt good...she admitted.

“Did you kill him?” She asked as she worked her jaw - the healed flesh stretched and pulled as she opened and closed her mouth. She knew, even without a mirror around, that the scar was ugly.

In the corner, without paying much attention, she saw the outline of that little body again. As Lucas cackled at the television set, she shut her eyes and counted to ten. It's nothing, she told herself. By the time she opened her eyes Lucas was staring down at her, his palms laid flat on the table with his lips pulled back in a sneer. The sight of him made her startle in her chair; made the breath in her lungs freeze up and seize her throat. The asshole could move without a sound if he wanted to.

“I showed him how retarded he was,” he corrected her, “Those assholes never know when to admit when they’re in over their heads you know?! I gotta show! them.”

Princess nodded, flashing her eyes to the corner again. Empty. The hallucination may have been gone but Lucas was real...

She swallowed down her knee-jerk reaction as he pulled out the chair beside her. The warm, almost damp fabric of his sweatshirt made her bristle as he draped an arm over her naked shoulders, but she counted one to ten again and on ten she gave him a soft, almost convincing smile. If she knew anything personal about this man it was that he was smart, but not smarter than he was sadistic and if he showed stupidity anywhere it was in how gullible he could be when it came to flattery. She would have felt sympathy for the obvious desire for attention - for a cure to his loneliness. She might have even had empathy for him for she too knew how much the need for attention or in her case affection could be, but he chose to put people under his boots to fill the hole inside him. To kill people in most cases.

“You showed him,” she told him, lips quivering, before bringing the ice pack back to her cheek. Lucas vibrated against her, his head sliding down. The cold sweat on his forehead pressed above her brow, soaking the fine hairs there.

He was disgusting...

“Fuck me, princess. You just gave me a boner!”

No. Fuck no.

Her heart raced desperately and though she braced herself for the self-indulgent fingers that twirled in the ends of her hair she wasn't ready for the kiss he plastered against her neck, nor the teeth that scraped towards her jugular. He sucked on her skin, grunting and curled the blunt edges of his fingernails under her jawline.

“I always wanted a girlfriend. You chicks taste so good,” he snorted, making exaggerated dog noises before erupting in a fit of snickers.

She couldn't help it. Princess jerked and recoiled from his lips when they go too close to her chin. It was a bad idea. Of course, it was, but her skin was crawling and another second of his touch was too much. She couldn't handle the thought of his lips on her own. All those heavy looks he'd been throwing at her were finally culminating in what she had dreaded. If it happened…let it be over quickly, please.

Lucas snarled and grabbed her bare breast, squeezing it like he'd been doing it all his life and went to...to put his mouth on them when, suddenly, he froze. His head snapped to the corner. There was nothing there...nothing there. Nothing at all.

The sound of her blood surging through her veins filled her ears and then…

“Ah’ come on, Eveline!” He shouted to the corner, dropping the weight of her breast so quickly it hurt. The chair he'd been sitting on fell back as he stood up, standing up to his full staggering height. She curled into herself, crunching the ice in her fist, pressing it deeper into her skin; feeling her teeth ache from the cold. Her skin burned where he touched her.

“Look at ‘er. She wants it! You know she does!”

Princess tried to become as small as possible, hiding her neck inside the slope of her shoulders and sitting back in the chair, watching him carefully as he threw his fit. Don't make a move, she told herself as her knees shook. Don't make a sound or move a fucking muscle.

“Well, what's the point in having a girlfriend if she don’t like me?! You said you'd get me one and now I got one and what? - I can't do nothin’ with her?!”

This has happened before, him talking to himself. When he and his father shoved her in that metal drawer, hoping she'd hatch, they had started talking to some unseen thing. It happened again when she was in the shower and Lucas had pulled off his hoodie, trying to get his belt buckle undone as quickly as possible ready to…

...only to pause and argue with some ghost across the bathroom. Half of it had been nonsense to her at the time. She'd been too frightened to pay any attention. Her eyes had been glued to the open fly of his pants, imagining how much strength she'd need to rip his cock off when he finally came at her with it. But he hadn't. Whoever he spoke to seemed to shame him and instead of being molested she got a bottle of head and shoulders throw in the tub with her...

She heard him talking to this ‘someone’ as often as he talked to her and at times, Princess thought she saw a little kid; a girl. Hallucinations, she always told herself. She was going crazy enough now to start seeing shit too. Who knew what she'd be thinking and doing in a week if she was already seeing shadow people. Whatever afflicted had taken hold of the Baker’s, it was contagious.

Lucas was reared up like a mean dog, shoulders back, legs bent and...Princess looked away from the bulge in his pants. He hadn't been lying about that. Why would he?

“Bullshit, Eveline!” He shouted, so deep and loud and malicious she felt her stomach twist in panic. After a couple moments his wrath dropped, and then he laughed. That sound scared her almost as much as his shouting did. This place - the whole damn compound - was like a diabolical nuthouse. Always as much laughter as there was squealing and sobbing.

Lucas gave her a low look and her thoughts stopped. He raked his gaze up and down her naked torso before making an exaggerated groan of displeasure, shoulders slumping. When he finally fell back down in his lazy boy, rewinding his tape in pure concentration, she breathed once again. In the corner, she saw nothing, but she felt something and for some reason, she couldn't help but give the emptiness a small shaken smile. Whatever it was, a hallucination? - another monster? - it didn't want Lucas touching her and for that she was grateful.

God wasn't listening, if he even existed, so she'd take all the help she could get.

\----------------------------------------

Princess looked at the clothes Lucas threw on the bed beside her. He shrugged with one of his aloof grins when she looked up at him in confusion. He'd forced her to walk around his place for four days with nothing but her socks on and now suddenly he wanted her in...his clothes?

On the bed rested a faded Louisiana State jersey, a pair of jeans that wouldn't ever fit her and a plaid pair of boxers...those of which looked clean at least.

“These…” she held the jeans in her hands, pulling the waistband across her hips before looking back up at him. Lucas just shrugged again, baring his teeth in an amused, wild sort of way.

“Hehehe-haaa...you don't like ‘em then don't wear ‘em.” He told her, looking smug before turning his back to her, footsteps gradually receding until she couldn't hear him any longer. Princess glared at the doorway he left out of, wondering how many teeth he'd spit out if she took that stupid trophy in the corner and bludgeoned him with it.

She wasn't sure where he went during the days, but sometimes he muttered to himself, saying he'd take her there but he never did. was Somehow she'd gone from being sick with fear every second of the day and night to being...bored? Funny how that happened.

Despite being a so-called genius he lacked in the book department. There were a few old Archie comics and some sports magazines with lots of pictures and words cut out, but aside from that, she had little to do but avoid Lucas and his unblinking eyes.

He would be gone for hours at a time and so she sat there on the edge of his bed and stared at the clothes in her lap. Not that it mattered, but she could have used a razor too. The itch of the prickly hairs between her legs and on her legs was frustrating. She gave the doorway another fleeting glance before picking up his clothes and heading to the bathroom. For such a shit hole the place at least had warm water.

Only when she could hear the vibrating thump of his music, did she bother turning on the shower. Princess let out a shaky, rattled breath and sat down on the rim of the tub, waiting for the water to heat up and wondering if she could drown herself - if it were possible. No, probably not. Survival instinct would kick in at the last moment. Of course there were other ways to off herself if she wanted to. The urge obviously wasn't enough because she hadn't given much thought to it until now and even now she wasn't very serious about it. Idle thoughts all that...

‘...you like him, don't you?’

“No,” she replied without thinking, only realizing after a few seconds that she’d responded to a disembodied voice and not her own subconscious. Fearfully, she leaped off the rim, searching the mildewed walls for that little illusion. There was nothing. But the voice came again.

‘You like him. I know you do.’

She didn't…and as she stood there, frozen and waiting, that terror she'd been blissfully without for a few hours started rearing its ugly head. After ten silent minutes, she stepped back, crawling into the shower so she could scrub the musky smell of Lucas’ bed sheets off her.

The jersey was warm and thick. It went down around her thighs and though the boxers smelled of him they stretched around her hips fine enough. She refused to be picky. Not having a bra was frustrating but at least she had a minuscule amount of protection. Clothes were like armor and as she walked around, keeping to the only places she dared to roam, she realized how true that was. She felt completely different with something on...maybe even brave. Brave enough to run?

No, but maybe.

On the edges of her vision, she kept seeing a tiny shadow. The floorboards under her shook a couple times and somewhere she could hear Lucas cackling and hollering over the bass of his music.

She itched at the short spiky hair between her legs again and frowned.

The doors were locked behind her, but the hallway Lucas stomped off through was open. Princess eyed the small counter where the hot plate and the ratty ice box sat. She pulled out a half empty bottle of water and chugged it, ignoring the memory of Lucas taking a drink from it last night and took the dull kitchen knife with her in search of something to do.

She told herself she felt strong enough to stab the piece of shit in the back but...the knife was in case the shuffling monsters bothered her. One afternoon she’d come across one but all it did was sway beside her before flooding into a black wall of the erosive mold that permeated the place. Still, even if they left her alone she'd rather have it and not need it at any rate.

She found Lucas by following the every increasing pound-throb of strobe music. He was sitting behind a tower of computer screens and video feeds; running code, surveillance footage of at least three different rooms, a screen with chat windows open and one with...porn on it, which he didn't even seem to be paying any attention to.

His hood was up and hi knee was bouncing up and down like a piston. The loud, throbbing gutter music kept him from noticing her. He wouldn't know what was happening until she had the knife buried in his back...or would he?

Sweat made her grip on the knife less stable, but she wrung her fingers around the handle regardless, running through different scenarios and the many, endless outcomes of each. She could get a decent stab on him, but that might not kill him. If he was like the common Hollywood zombie then a blow to the head would be better than a knife in the back - could a kitchen knife crack a human skull, though? Could the blade reach the heart from his back without snapping off on his shoulder blade or should she go for the throat? She could slit it - it'd be the easiest choice, but would it kill him?

There was something wrong with him...and her now. The scar curving up from her lip to her cheekbone proved that. The scars on his stomach, those of which she’d glimpsed that day in the shower, looked like he'd been cut in half at one point. If that hadn't killed him then how could she do it with an eight-inch blade?

“Stupid!”

Princess lurched back, knife sliding out of her slippery palm to fall to the floor in shock. The music swallowed the clatter but she watched, horrified, in a cold sweat as Lucas’ leg stopped shaking. The hand he had hovered over the computer mouse paused and as he twisted around in his chair she felt her heart stop. Surprisingly, he didn't seem startled to see her or the knife on the floor, in fact, he gave the chair a twirl, pushed himself around in a tight circle before bursting into laughter.

“Hahaha!” He laughed at her, “Hoo-hooo! Oh! Oh, princess, did you think you were gonna hurt me with that little thing there? No. No, no...yer gonna need something bigger than that,” he grinned but it slid immediately into a frowned, “I think, I'm not sure actually. She don't want us to die after all so you'd think it'd take more than that.”

“I wasn't…” she tried to lie but couldn't manage it. He knew and she knew. There was no point in lying. Lucas didn't even seem upset over her intentions which rose more questions than she had the mental energy to even begin to answer. In fact, he clapped his hands and spun around in his chair twice again before skidding to a stop with the heels of his sneakers. He mock-danced in his seat and slapped his thighs.

“Come on. Have a seat! I wanna show you somethin’, princess.”

She looked at the knife on the floor as if it would have some words of advice for her, but it said nothing. The hallucination said nothing either so Princess stumbled forward and swallowed a groan of disgust as he pulled her down over his lap. There was no hard bulge under her and for that she was grateful but then he spun them around and hugged her across the middle giggling fiendishly. Between him and vertigo, she hoped she didn't get sick.

The surveillance footage in front of her flickered and she remained as still as could be as he clicked some browsers closed, expanded a window and there, right in front of her, she saw...

"...Sam?" she breathed. Her best friend was eating her own wrist to escape her shackles. Long, terrible teeth were growing out the top of her head…

“Why are you showing me this?” she demanded, bristling. For the first time since Lucas’ father took her and her friends to the garage she felt anger instead of fear. It wasn't enough that she’d been walking around naked for four days or that he felt alright groping her, yelling at her and tossing her around like a fucking rag doll. Now he was going to make her watch this.

“Why not?! ‘Cause she’s yer friend or somethin’? You ain't got no more friends. Just me and Eveline here with you now, but don't worry, your girl ain't no girl no more.”

“What’d you do to her?”

“Me? Ah, hell! That there's my Mama's cookin’. Guess you didn't take to it so well, huh? I got lucky the hot one was the one who didn't hatch,” he pinched her stomach as if that had been a compliment...

She swallowed a curse and stared at the screen, ignoring him behind her, running his palms up and down her stomach and hips. That stuff at dinner - that rubbery shit. She'd eaten that, but only after his dear old dad sliced her mouth open with a pocket knife. After that, the foul taste she'd feared paled in comparison to the taste of her own blood. But for whatever reason, she didn't turn into a monster...not like Sam did anyway. Maybe Sam was dead and whatever it was on the screen wasn't really her. Like a zombie or something.

“So, what’d Eveline say to ya?”

Princess sat there with her hands folded in her lap, her back straight and a lump in her throat. His fingers twitch around her ribs; jittery for a reply. If he knew about the auditory hallucinations then maybe he knew other things...like how she planned on pulling his guts out tonight.

“Nothing,” she lied and tried not to cry when Lucas just held onto her, flushing her back to his chest, laughing over his pulsating music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you have the time I'd love to read what you think of this. I'm my own Beta so please excuse any errors and feel free to point any out that you see. More on the way.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for intense physical abuse and violence in this chapter. Princess does some snooping around...
> 
> Thank you for the comments on the last chapter! As I said before, it's an awesome feeling to know others enjoy what I'm writing. Hopefully, this one pleases everyone as much as the last two.

On day six, Princess climb on top Lucas as he slept, as careful as a spider on its web. She’d been waiting for thirty-three solid hours for him to lay down and close his eyes. Within seconds of falling in bed, he was out stone cold like a dead drunk. 

She dared a small smile under the fluorescent lights, crawling over him and took her long-awaited moment - she stabbed the kitchen knife into his chest over and over and over again. His eyes snapped open on the second stab and blood sputtered out of his mouth on the fourth and even though he laughed through most of it, she was certain she'd actually killed him when he finally went still - those huge cracked-out eyes glazed over. 

Princess hovered over him, panting and grunting and realized how naive she'd been. His smile was twitching up at her still, and a wet, clogging wheeze of laughter brought sick into her throat. She swallowed it down but realized too late she should have just thrown up on him. If he wasn’t going to die she may as well have gotten vomit in his wounds.

‘You see?’

“Yeah, yea I see,” she gasped, fisting the pillow underneath his head as she caught her breath, sucking in lungfuls of air. The seeping adrenaline was leaving her light-headed. Something about stabbing someone continuously until they stopped living, or should have at least, was exhausting. There, beneath her, Lucas gurgled, his eyes shifting energetically. 

‘No...no…look! Can't you see now?!’

Princess paused, sitting back on Lucas’ bony hips as Eveline peered at her through the bed frame. It was the first real good look she'd gotten of the little girl. Mean black eyes and pale fat cheeks. The hint of white teeth between her lips reminded Princess of those serial killers she saw on the crime network. Eveline shook her head, obscuring her face in webbed black hairs - the sound she made was one of disapproval. What did she mean ‘see now’? 

What? See that she couldn't kill her way out of here? That she wasn't much different than this white trash asshole underneath her or what?!

“What?!” She screamed. Needing some sort of halfway decent answer before her goddamn head exploded.

When she looked away from Eveline’s hidden smile, to peer down at Lucas he was staring up at her, licking the blood off his lips. Princess jolted back when he made a lewd thrust up into her spread thighs, shoving his hard dick into her inner thigh. She couldn't get off him quick enough, figuratively and literally. Lucas, with the strength of ten men, sprung back to life like a coiled snake unfolding, breaking her wrist like brittle charcoal - the bloody knife falling to the bed. The sound of her bone snapping would forever haunt her.

“Lucas!” She shrieked out in hot agony, maybe thinking that he'd go soft at hearing his name on her lips but it only fueled the bloodlust. She watched in numb shock as he yanked the knife off the bed, grabbed her knee and started to saw into her thigh, cutting down to the bone with a manic, toothsome smile. She screamed until her throat cracked. The pain was unbearable - so much so she didn't even feel it when he threw her off the bed, her skull bouncing off the floor. 

The world instantly went black and she couldn’t have been more grateful. 

When she woke up she was tied to Lucas’ musty lazy boy with the evening news blaring at her from the television set. A well dressed black man was going over the evening headlines…

‘Florida man jumps off balcony: second death this week’

‘Governor apologizes on behalf of secretary's indiscretions’

...and something about a rabies outbreak. She blinked slowly as the channel tuned into a commercial for skittles. Insanity had set in because she sat there for a few minutes wondering how they kept their cable bill paid: auto draft or did his dad drive on down to the store and hand them a wad of red-stained bills?

Out the corner of her eye, she saw Lucas hunched over the table. He was staring at a bright screen with a dead look on his face as he tapped away at his laptop keyboard. The dark purple stains on his hoodie reminded her of what she did to him last night. Something about the sight of it made her stomach fill with butterflies. Gratification, maybe? She liked the feeling, whatever it was. 

A gurgle from the doorway distracted her from the bloody gashes in Lucas’ hoodie. Off in the entryway was a monster, groaning and swaying; the floor under it stained with black mold. 

“Hey! Hey, you! Yeah, you! Go on! Get!” Lucas yelled at it like someone would a feral dog, waving his hands in a common ‘get the fuck out’ gesture. When it didn't move it got a can of beans thrown at its chest. It's gaping maw hung off to the side as if looking at the offending can before it gurgled again. It sounded ominously like a question but it didn't get an answer. Soon enough it shambled off…leaving a snail trail of black behind it. A terrible nagging thought stuck with her...what if that was Sam? 

“...stupid assholes. Ain’t worth a damn sometimes, you know? Yeah, you hear that asshole? You ain't worth nothin’ but shit!”

The faded, responding groan from the fleeing monster bordered on amusing...somehow. 

Princess took in a steady breath before resting back into the musty cushions and watched the news again while Lucas’ attention was directed elsewhere. A storm was coming in. The running feed at the bottom of the screen declared a flood warning in effect until 7 p.m. and the news channel told her it was 7:32 a.m. 

She wondered what a man like Lucas would do for fun without any power to fuel his gadgets. The thoughts that came to mind made her skin sweat with impending dread. Surely, the man’s idea of fun wouldn’t coincide with her own...though, to be fair, something about last night appealed to her, even if he got the upper hand on her. For one moment she’d felt a wave of bliss at looking down at his motionless body. The warmth underneath her...

On the next commercial break, her toe itched. She scratched it with the heel of her foot, only to stop and look down at her lap. 

Judging by the long clean scar on her thigh he couldn't kill her any more than she could kill him and aside from a mild headache, there wasn't much lasting damage from her ‘fall’ to the floor. Kinda made her wanna ‘kill’ him again. She felt...better after stabbing him so many times. The dumb look on his face was gratifying and even the pain was somehow...exhilarating. It wasn't that she liked it, just that it wasn't the worst thing she'd felt since being here. And if she could inflict it on Lucas? - then all the better. 

\----------------------------------------

The next night she followed the same ritual she did the evening prior. Take the knife laid out on the table as if Lucas had sent it to her in an invitation, and pick up her feet towards him. He was reclining in his lazy boy this time, watching her under half-closed eyes with his arms folded back behind his head. It looked obscene - the way he looked at her, but the sudden spark in his gaze when she brandished the knife against her thigh almost made her giddy. 

“My-oh-my,” he chimed. "I guess I don't deserve a sweet, little Suzie homemaker, now do I? Don't matter to me, princess. I wouldn't know what to do with one of those and yer into some real kinky shit and I'm down for that."

He wagged his eyebrows at her, unblinking as he bent a leg up on the kickstand before he shimmied into the cushions with a pleasant leer. Princess found herself smiling back just before she lunged at him. 

That time she managed to cut his ear off before he reached around her waist, yanking her down in his lap just before he snapped her arm in half and punched her lights out. It had been quick, but she'd never felt more alive. Even the way he’d ground his hips into her ass as she slipped into unconsciousness didn’t feel so disgusting.

By the third night, she was starting to think it had filled the void that Lucas wanted to fill by molesting her. Whether he would have actually gone through with raping her or not she wasn't exactly convinced yet. He had every opportunity to do it and it wasn’t as though Eveline was always around to stop him. Either way, he played dumb when she showed up as he ‘slept’. He even pretended to be surprised by her until the enjoyment of it made him laugh. He must have thought it was a game, but each time she started a fight she hoped it'd be the last time, whether that meant she killed him or him her. It didn't matter really. 

She laughed once herself when they were squabbling on the floor - it was a short, bubbling laugh as he strangled her; their well used knife sticking out of her belly. It was a small sound, but it meant something so much bigger.

After that she made a point to drown out her boredom by hanging around him during most of the day and night, watching him send out emails and look busy even though she knew he was posting shitty troll comments on message boards half the time. No doubt he was an asshole even before this, she thought, but the more she killed him and the more he killed her...the more she realized he was infected by that little girl and she was too. What would he really be like without Eveline whispering to him? Still a dick...but maybe not a murdering pervert. 

Sometimes she wanted to take their knife and cut that old fucking hoodie off him, carve the same slurs he typed on his keyboard into his stomach and suck up the blood that pooled in his navel.

That...that was a wrong and disgusting thought and yet-

“Shit!” He cursed. 

Princess turned her neck to watch him, still holding the knife in her palm. The purple bags under his left eye twitched and every ten words he typed he licked his lips. For the first time, she noticed how much his facial hair had grown in. A bead of cold sweat ran down the side of his temple, catching in his ear before spilling down the side of his neck. Princess stared and swore she could see the artery in his neck throbbing, pumping blood to his brain; fueling him. She let out a sound, something between a groan and a sigh before wiping her sweaty palms over the boxers she wore. Maybe she was getting sick...sick of being near him. 

“You could use a shave,” she mumbled as she stood up; eyeing him hatefully. There were better things to do than sitting here and going insane. Let him troll forums and pretend he was good at the games he played. She didn't care. Princess left him alone to find a lonely corner where she could ‘not care’ all by herself and told herself it was better than being Lucas’ girlfriend. 

From down the hallway, she could hear him hollering at her, “So could you, princess!”

\----------------------------------------

One night or morning or whatever time it was, when Lucas was asleep, Princess put down the knife and sat gingerly in his surveillance chair.

His keyboard was littered with chip crumbs and something green and sticky like spilled lime soda. The ‘shift’ key kept getting stuck as she tried a list of passwords he had taped up on the cork board, but eventually, she had two out of several screens pulled up. Apparently, he had a different password for each screen. She knew enough about computers to know that doing something like that used software she was wholly unfamiliar with. It wouldn’t be worth figuring out. She had the main desktop open at any rate and...

The surveillance monitor she got into was...fuck. Sam, she stared. The sight before her made her heart ached. 

On the monitor, she could see what was left of Sam - the same badass girl that had her back in middle school when that volleyball player bitch wanted to beat the shit out of her for whatever stupid reason bullies had back then. Sam, who snuck her out of the house one night when she was grounded for giving a kid one of her anxiety pills. This was the same girl who talked her into going out on this stupid road trip under the guise of getting laid. 

If it wasn't for Sam, she'd be at her parents for winter break right now...and yet all she felt was that terrible pain in her chest. She missed her so much. Princess wouldn’t go as far as to say she wanted to trade places with her, but living wasn't so great either. The end game for her was playing girlfriend to a psychopath. Sam’s was to die and hatch into a monster. They were both shitty outcomes. 

Princess licked her lips as the tears started slipping over them. She watched the flickering screen with her fingers pressed to the glass as Sam shuffled across the tiny room...her human hand shriveled up on the floor and the rest of her a solid mass of black; bulbous and sharp. 

Lucas had to give the girl credit. Sam chewed through her own flesh to get away from him but there was nothing left of her anymore. There wasn't much difference between her and that monster Lucas tossed the can of beans at anymore. What she knew of that girl was gone. Hopefully, if there was a God, Sam was somewhere nicer than Princess was now. That crazy bitch deserved some happiness after this hellhole. They both did. 

Those nasty teeth gapped open - looking mangled in the fuzz from the camera. She tried to look at it and find something of her friend but came up with nothing. She was half lost in self-pity when a bleep jolted her half out of the chair. The words ‘New Email’ pulsed on the screen to her right, like some catastrophic warning before it faded, leaving a red exclamation mark in the bottom right tab. 

Princess reached for the mouse, paused and looked behind her. The room was empty save for her, the monitors and the clutter. 

No Lucas. 

She didn't feel so sure about being as alone as she wanted to be, but it didn't stop her from holding her breath as she maneuvered the cursor, clicked and scooted closer to the wall of text. 

L,

Airdropped in the agreed upon location.

\- Mr. Orange

Her brows creased at the obscurity of it. She re-read it half a dozen times before quickly clicking out of it when she heard something rattling down the hallway. She wasn’t sure what Lucas would do if he caught her snooping around. The man was unpredictable, of course. He could laugh at her, toss her out his chair or cut her head off.

Carefully, she glanced behind her again to find the doorway empty. It didn’t matter if he caught her, though because she realized just then that eventually, he'll see that his new email’s been opened, anyway. Even if he didn't catch her red-handed he'd know when he woke up and got back to his usual routine. Reading his email had been stupid - stupid and dangerous. If he wanted to punish her before, he'd have tossed her around, now...now how did you punish someone that couldn't die? 

She'd fucked herself.

Since she had nothing to lose she checked the doorway again and dug in, reading emails between Lucas and Mr. Orange that went as far back as late November. Most of it didn't make much sense to her, especially the emails from this month and earlier, but the last dozen emails talked about a serum and a list of symptoms…

She scanned through the list and checked off seven out of eleven. 

Anxiety bubbled up in her chest, making her hands shake as she skimmed through bullshit ramblings from Lucas and cold robotic type from Mr. Orange. She had seven out of eleven of the fucking symptoms...Seven! Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Her head started to pound and the blood racing in her ears made her sick. It took a good couple of minutes to calm herself down. Get a handle on it, she told herself. Nothing’s changed. But that was a lie, everything had changed.

“...asshole,” she seethed, skimming a huge paragraph from Lucas’ last sent email. It detailed everything, from his thoughts on capital punishment to what kind of food he'd eat after the drop off was made (meatloaf)...and in between all the bullshit, a paragraph stuck out...

‘-and my new girlfriend? Orange pop, my man, she’s a real pain in my ass. Eve promised me something to play with but if the girl isn't crying to be let go then she's trying to kill me in my sleep and I'm not gonna say no to foreplay but this is ridiculous. You got to throw another one in the deal for me. She might have gone rotten or some-’

Princess suddenly felt a keen sense of survival instinct bubbling up as she clicked out of his emails. Worse case scenario he was going to replace her with some other poor girl. Best case scenario she’d get a friend to hide from Lucas with. Either way, there was the very real possibility that another girl would be subjected to all of this and more, maybe. As Princess sat in Lucas’ chair with her hands on her thighs, she accepted that what she was thinking about doing was something a more prideful person wouldn't ever consider. 

Pride only hurt, though. 

The scar on her thigh was dull but visible and when she lifted the jersey the same could be said of the stab marks on her stomach. Her face was another reminder. She couldn't go on with the knife. It wasn't her only weapon...it's just that, despite the blood, the knife had felt cleaner than the others. She'd do it if she could actually do ‘it’. Being mentally prepared wasn't the same as being physically ready, but hell...it was a start. 

If Lucas wanted a girlfriend...she'd sure as fuck give it a shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this one. Next one will be up tomorrow at some point. Most of it's done and ready - I just need to make sure there are no jarring mistakes. If you have the time please leave me a comment. They mean a lot. Also, if you see as fuck up's please let me know. Thanks!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for everyone that's been reading, leaving comments and kudos. It makes this more fun knowing others like it. I also posted a playlist of what I've been listening to while writing (in case anyone wants to listen to some fucked up stuff http://brimbrimbrimbrim.tumblr.com/post/157833141493/i-made-myself-a-lucas-baker-playlist-out-of-the ) 
> 
> Warning: for explicit sexual content, dubious consent, and violence. Princess does what she has to do and nothing more.

The implication of Lucas’ email correspondences caused her to roam around aimlessly in thought. She trekked further than she'd ever done before until the reek of moldy hay assailed her nostrils. Hidden away in the middle of his place was a barn. Judging by the shambling mold monsters down below it was where he kept his...playthings. 

Princess sat down in the coop with a painful groan, legs folded as she breathed in and out, one to ten, and ran over her options. What she was considering was making her head ache, her stomach twist and whatever dignity she had left dissolve. 

The man needed attention; craved it - that was obvious. The rare times she'd mentioned what he was doing in a positive manner got genuine reactions of pleasure out of him. She could - if she could manage it - take off her clothes and lay face down on the bed, taunt him with words instead of physical touch...but the idea of being fucked by him made her skin crawl. The lesser, as in less intimate option, was a handjob. The thought still made her nose scrunch up in distaste but it could have been worse...

As long as she could psych herself up for looking at him - for being an active participant, it would be an ideal course of action. He'd get off, feel like he had an actual girlfriend and then that'd buy her some time. If Princess kept her lips close to his ear and whispered some praise at him she may not even have to look at him while she did it. 

Lucas hadn't shown her any footage of Lydia or teased her about her other friend's fate at all. Maybe she'd escaped and help was on the way. If that was the case then she needed to secure her position with Lucas even more so than before and...even if no one was coming to her rescue, she could at least keep another innocent from turning into Lucas' plaything. She didn't know how many people the Baker's had fed their supper too, nor what percentage of them hatched into the monsters below her feet. It could she was a rare case...

Would he keep going through girls, tossing out the hatched ones for his undead army, until one of them became whatever it was she'd become? The thought angered her; gave her a wave a purpose. No matter the outcome she had to keep him appeased, for her sake and for the sake of any future victims.

Still, for all she knew she'd be rescued in a couple days and spend the next six months in an institution on a plethora of meds and mandatory therapy sessions. It would beat this hell hole at least. She'd gladly trade Lucas Baker and his psychotic quirks for four padded walls and a fist full of happy pills. 

She nodded her head, agreeing with herself. Yeah, she could do this. The aimless, staggering walk of the monsters below was a reminder that, against all logic and self-pride, she had to - had to do it. If she didn't she'd be replaced by someone else. Princess couldn't let that happen.

By the time she went out in search of him, her mind made up and a loose script in her head, he was standing in the main room with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his head thrown back with a grimace.

The news was blasting out of the shitty built-in speakers of the television set and there, beside him, stood his father - the old man himself. He was glaring at his son; glasses broke and lip bloody and raw. 

The tv echoed - ‘High winds at 25 nautical miles. Flood warning in effect from 3:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Central. Officials recommend staying indoors. Possible waterspouts inbound, so you better tuck your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye!’

Princess blinked, staring hauntingly at the back of the television set. More hallucinations, she realized, swallowing ounces and pounds of fear as she finally noticed the puddle of water around Lucas’ dad's boots. Rainwater dripped off his nose, his clothes and slid dangerously off the meat hook in his hand - it swayed dangerously between the two men. 

“I don't need no lip from you boy. Get yer coat and let's go. Yer Mama’s hungry and we got one rottin’ downstairs that needs’ah movin’!”

“Fuck that, ol’ man - you got two legs. ‘sides, I’ve got bigger fish to fry over here,” Lucas tossed out casually, rolling his mirthless eyes, sounding less like a petulant child and more like a belligerent cohort.

“You just got no concept of the bigger picture," Lucas continued, "I’m! - me, all by mah' self - I’m doing all the work here ya know! Who was it that got rid of those bodies last week, hmm? Me! That’s who.”

Bodies, one or more or many? And there was another one that needed disposing of.

Could it have been Lydia rotting away? Were they going to toss her fetid corpse in the swamp while the storm was rolling through? Princess hovered in the doorway, ignored by both of them as Lucas argued underneath the slow simmer of rage filling up the old man's face. She'd never seen someone’s cheeks literally go red with anger, but Lucas seemed none too worried about it. 

When his dad swung the meat hook around, goring it into Lucas’ back and jerking them nose to nose, she took a hard step forward before she wondered what the fuck she was thinking stepping up for a shithead like Lucas. For a split second, she’d had the urge to rip that mad bastard a new smile. He deserved one after what he did to hers after all. It was revenge, that’s all it was...

"Now you listen to me, boy," he enunciated right in Lucas' face. To his credit, Lucas didn't seem all that scared, more annoyed at being skewered and inconvenience. "My baby girl don't need no bloated bodies stinkin' up the place. You come and follow me now, you hear. Or I'll cut yer little bitch's cunt out."

Princess curled her fingers nails into her palms, digging into the flesh as Lucas chuckled, as if it was an empty threat...or maybe the idea amused him.

She watched as blood seeped and stained the off-white of Lucas’ undershirt - a circle of black sludge bubbled up around the embedded hook, reminding her of the same black that came away from her face when Lucas had stitched her up. 

‘Do you see now?’

They were the same, she realized; mortified. She, just like them, was infected with whatever it was that made them this way. She was like them. Just. Like. Them. 

The old man gave the hook stuck in Lucas' abdomen a hard jerk, making his long limbs sway and a sound, like pain, roll out of his throat. One more hard tug and Lucas growled.

“Goddamnit, fine! Shit! Between you and the bitch, I ain’t gonna have any clothes left. I've had this shirt since the nine-grade!” Lucas accused but eventually conceded, slapping his dad's hand away from the handle jutting out his back. His dad chortled, grinning and huckin’ up pleased titters all the while the blood oozed down Lucas' body.

“Yewww’ don’t know shit, boy.” 

Princess had to agree with him, in a way, but she still wrung her fingers in the slack of her jersey, feeling ill at the sight of Lucas stumbling back on his heels, the meat hook still stuck in his back. The son, as insane as he was, hadn't ripped her cunt out yet...hadn't threatened to, either. As Lucas twisted around, trying to get a good grip on the iron handle, she saw the curved, red-flesh coated tip, sticking out his chest and felt a strong pull on her heels to go help him. Instead, she felt vomit burp into the back of her throat.

She was going to be sick. 

And she was. She puked right there on the floor with the two male Baker’s watching her as she gagged and heaved. Tears welled up in her lashes and through the ringing, in her ears, she could hear Lucas let out a huge gaping sigh. 

“Aw’fuck! Come on, princess! Yer makin’ it real hard to like you, ya know.”

Funny that now she wanted - needed - him to like her, that was becoming a hard thing to manage...

\----------------------------------------

Lucas didn’t return for a solid three hours and by the time he appeared she was sweaty with nerves, causing the shower she’d taken earlier to be all but pointless. The whole not knowing when he’d show up, or what sort of condition he’d be in when he got back caused her to pace back and forth endlessly. 

Princess didn’t even care that she’d spent the last hour talking to herself like a lunatic, begging every shadow that minutely resembled Eveline, for advice - for something. Courage? No, that was asking too much, but a distraction at the very least would have been nice.

When she finally heard him, his footsteps loud and purposeful down the hallway, she straightened up, adjusting the folded waistband of his boxers around her hips to exposed more of her thighs - it felt ridiculous but she needed to not look like complete shit if her plan was going to work. She had just enough time to slide her damp hair over one shoulder before he made his grand entrance. 

The door flew open, banging back on its hinges, nearly throwing her into another panic attack. He’d almost kicked the damn door in…

He was drenched to the bone. The old white undershirt had turned translucent despite the pink stains of blood and his pants - belt struggling - sagged on his hips with the weight of the soaked in rainwater. What was most unlucky was the bloody, meaty stub of his arm. Little bits of flesh swung as he huffed and puffed dramatically across the room.

“Move!” he shouted at her, but she wasn’t quick enough so he simply shouldered her out of his way.

Princess stumbled but held her ground, observing him as he tried to work the ice box open with the heel of his sneaker - the wet squeaky sound of wet rubber on porcelain made her skin crawl. Seeing an opportunity she rushed up to the icebox and opened it for him before he could get it open himself.

Just pretend, she told herself. It'll be over quicker that way. 

Lucas gave her a brief look as he stood there dripping clear and red in nearly equal measure. It wasn’t a grateful look, but he seemed more curious than distrustful and she could work with that. Princess forced herself to smile - making sure to crinkle her eyes so her face appeared truly pleased to see him. His lips parted and that smarmy smirk of his stretched up on one corner of his mouth, making her fake smile become real. Lucas, for all his intelligence, bought the act.

“Grab that bottle ova' there,” he told her, nodding his chin at the single green glass bottle on the middle rack. Same looking one he poured on her face that first day…

She reached in and grabbed it, holding back a cringe as he leaned in and sniffed her hair, whistling.

With the bottle in both her hands, she stood there in silence as he kicked the door closed. If she didn't have both hands on it, she'd have dropped it. No matter how hard she tried she just couldn't stop trembling; fingers shivering and heart lurching. Lucas wore a chummy expression as he gave her a good once over, biting his lower lip with barely contained mirth. She swallowed as he and his shiny, slick stump headed over to his favorite seat in the house - the lazy boy recliner with the questionable stains and torn upholstery. He was going to ruin that chair with rainwater and she almost opened her mouth to say so. 

“Do you want a towel?” she offered instead, following closely as if he’d attached a thread around her waist, never straying more than a few feet from him. That towel - the same she'd used for her shower - smelt like decades old mold. It was still damp from her shower and had just as many stains as his chair but it would have been better if he were dry. He looked even more revolting damp and dripping than he normally did, as if he were covered in slime...

“Nah, I’m burnin’ up anyways. Damn Pa’s got himself a fine collection to jerk off with by now and I gotta concentrate on poppin’ this puppy back out.” 

He seemed less animated, more reserved, which she couldn't deny she enjoyed, but it wasn’t right on him. Unpredictable, she reminded herself. Never assume with him. Just because he wasn't shouting and bouncing up and down right then didn't mean he couldn't be in a couple seconds. One wrong word or move and she could be dying again - further and further behind schedule. Princess needed to find her opportunity before he got back on his computer. 

“I know what yer thinkin’," he crooned, "..’but Lucas, sweetheart! It doesn't work that way.’ Oh, but it does. Just you wait and see.”

Lucas’ smile dropped as his head swayed, observing his weeping stub with vague interest. Eventually, he looked up at her and nodded his head towards his severed arm with an unspoken demand. Princess mimicked him, nodding as she kneeled down beside him, unscrewing the cap - the little metal bit fell out of her shaking hands and to the floor, startling her momentarily.

Fuck, get it together, she told herself, counting to ten but only getting to three before he was chuckling at her. 

“Ooh,” he tapped the toes of his sneakers in tandem with her erratic beating heart, “what’s got you all riled up, princess? It’s jus’ a little bit of blood - nothing to be worried about!” He informed her, cackling and somehow that relaxed her shaking hands.

At least she was more used to this frantic version of Lucas than the silent, almost somber one. There was no way she could start the first phase of her plan with him like this...even if he looked to be enjoying himself, somehow. When Lucas stuck out his stub she poured the slick liquid over the even slice, watching the blood turn to jelly and begin fizzing like soda pop. She swallowed down a wave of nausea and looked up at him to stop from staring at the chemical reaction. He was too busy watching the spectacle to notice her gaze. Unblinking eyes bulged at the sight and Princess swore she could see the reflection of bubbling red in his glassy eyes.

“What-” again she swallowed, “Why’d he cut it off?”

“Oh-who knows with that ugly, dementia riddled son of a bitch. I could have it fused back by now - could have jerked off with it tonight too, but no! He’s gotta keep ‘em. They always take hours to grow back!”

Princess felt her heart leap into her throat. She rested her fingertips on his thigh, seeing her opportunity and taking it before anything like pride or common sense would kick in. Her lips were too close to his crotch though and she didn’t want this turning into getting face fucked, so she curled up on her heels and perched carefully on the armrest. All the while she took solace in the way his eyes followed her. 

“I could do it for you,” she told him, not nearly as sultry as she could have been.

She’d been with a couple guys before - she knew how to show interest, how to play along, but with Lucas...with this fucked up situation she found herself in, it wasn’t exactly easy to lay on the charm. Thankfully, it didn’t seem she needed to. Lucas actually looked like he was blushing. But that was stupid, right? No, he said he was burning up. After his groping and rape threats, she couldn’t sit there and believe the rosy tinge on his pale, moist cheeks was anything else but a fever. Unless he wasn’t used to a woman taking initiative, which seemed entirely possible…

 

“Would you like that, Lucas?” she asked, feeling something like confidence taking over the anxiety as his lips parted, staring at her with those wide, bulging eyes. She watched his lips twitch as they stretched out in a feral looking line. Not exactly a smile, but not a frown either. 

Princess resolved herself as she pushed his revolting stump of a hand over to the side, breathing deeply once he rested it on the other armrest. Lucas was still staring at her silently even when she braced her forearm on the headrest behind his neck, bending low to lift the hem of his soaked shirt out of the way - the ragged, pink-stained hole just above his navel brought back the image of him slowly twisting and pulling that meat hook out of himself.

She closed her eyes, willing the mental image away as she tucked his shirt loosely into his waistband before working his damp canvas belt loop loose. It didn’t come undone easily and Lucas didn’t offer any help. He stayed ominously quiet while she undid his belt. The button and zipper took no effort at all to undo, but they were the most difficult and if she’d been worried at all about him not going along with her insane plan, those fears were washed away for new ones when she eased her fingers inside his pants to find his cock as hard as a steel beam.

A sob slipped out of her mouth. Princess parted her lips whispering between them, “You’re so hard, baby…” She could only hope to God he bought the act despite how poorly she was playing it.

He was, it seemed, she hoped at least, but it might have been better if he wasn’t. Lucas' silence made her nervous - more unsure and awkward than she needed to be. She cupped his cock in her palm, refused to look at its heavy weight and forced the corners of her lips to twitch upwards for him.

Whatever smile she managed to give him couldn’t have been very genuine looking, so she squeezed her eyes shut and kissed his jaw to keep from having to look at him. Another second of his unblinking gaze would crumble her weak resolve. She brushed her lips along his ear and swiped her thumb over the bulbous head of his cock, feeling a warm ooze of precum that turned her stomach in a queer sort of way.

“That feel good?” she sighed against his neck, planting a wet kiss on his throat and tasting clean rain and salty sweat as his stubble stabbed her skin. Up this close, she could hear him swallow - a thick, curious sound that somehow made this easier. After a couple steady strokes she paused and gave him a hard squeeze - hard enough it made him choke, tense and release a long, loud groan as he deflated into the chair. 

That's it, she thought, get real cozy, asshole.

“Yeah-yea” he slurred, “...yesss sir-eee.” Lucas shifted between happy sounds of enjoyment and raw grunts. As her nails brushed up the knot of nerves along the head of his cock he tried to giggle but it died into a gratified mess of nonsense. Something about him seemed distressed...unsure, which, if she were honest with herself, she found a good amount of perverse pleasure in. 

'It's good...'

Princess grinned against the beating flesh of his neck - the vibration of his unsteady breaths and moans tickled her nose and made licking his bobbing Adam's apple almost delicious. 

Inside her tight fist, Lucas’ cock pulsed. She cupped the flared head and gave it a few slow, twisting strokes, before working him from root to tip over and over and over again. With her eyes closed and him thankfully at a loss for commentary, she could pretend he was someone else...

'Lucassss...ssss...'

When he slid his hand around her hip, fisting the fabric of the jersey she wore, she didn’t flinch like she figured she would have. His hot palm flattened out on her spine, stroked down and took a handful of her rear and aside from a slight jolt between her legs she had no reaction.

“Yer a nasty little bitch ain'tcha. What about you take off this-” he started but Princess opened her mouth and sunk her teeth into his neck, biting in hard and merciless. He groaned, tipping his head back and she bit in all the harder, tasting salt and sharp notes of blood. The flavor bursting on her tongue made her own blood rush in her ears, feeding some fucked up fire in her gut. Lucas was the one weak and fragile underneath her - drooling as she dug her teeth into his flesh and beat him off like some sweet switcheroo. Some sex slave he was, now...

Princess flattened her tongue out along the flesh she had hooked between her teeth and jerked Lucas Baker’s cock until he started rolling his hips up into her curled fist, making loud animal grunts of pleasure before letting out a rather...embarrassing sound. 

Warm spurts of cum fell all over his lap and her hand - a drop landing on her bent knee and sliding sickly down her calf. The heated, thick globs of semen ran down the back of her knuckles but she didn’t feel as nauseated by it as she’d thought she should…

As Lucas vibrated against her, Princess pulled her teeth out of his bobbing throat. She stared, part in horror and the rest in satisfaction, as she saw the weeping mark she'd left on his throat. 

"Fuck me!" he gasped loudly, head sliding back against the headrest and her bent arm, staring wide-eyed up at the moldy ceiling with a huge, open-mouthed grin on his face. Sweat and rainwater soaked into her skin from his hair, cooling her heated flesh. Her head buzzed with energy...adrenaline...eagerness…something terribly, awfully wrong...

She felt itchy and hot between her thighs and if she wasn’t still trying to play a role she’d have thrown herself out of his lap and damned herself to hell for it. But this reaction - this pounding in her loins - it wasn't her fault. It was biological, she reassured herself. It didn't mean anything - she...she wasn't sick...

Being with a man of her own volition, even given the less than consensual circumstances, was intimate even if she hated him. Humans were wired to be sexually aroused when they didn’t necessarily want to be sometimes, right? Yes. Survival of the species and all. That’s it. Nothing more. 

Lucas’ eyes fell half-closed, looking out into the far distance above their heads. His breathing was hard and fast, sweat beading on his forehead. Princess released his softening cock with a look of dismay, watching as her sticky palm moved of its own accord. Her stomach twisted, lips parting as her fingers came distressingly close to her peeking tongue. At the last moment, she shook off the puppet master, gulping down breaths as she stared at the cum-coated fingers that she nearly put in her fucking mouth!

“I-I-I’ll go-get that towel...you’re a mess, sweetie," she managed through a sudden, heavy layer of fear. The sappy nickname left a bad taste in her mouth, but better that than other things literally leaving bad tastes in her mouth. The foulness she tasted wasn't semen, thankfully but his blood still rested around on the tongue and she had to get that out of her... 

He didn't say a single word as she left him there in his indulgent stupor - big grin still beaming.

In the bathroom she swished her mouth out with water from the sink, frantically washing her sticky palms off in the hot spray and even though the mirror above was cracked in a hundred places, she could still see herself; hollow-eyed with ghost white skin. 

Behind her many reflections, she saw Eveline perched on the lip of the bathtub, smiling selfishly back at her.

"I hate him," Princess whispered; seething under her breath to the many faces of the little girl, wanting and needing to vent the emotion before it consumed her - before she ended up like the rest of this sick family.

'You love him - you love him - you love him - love him - love - him - love...love...love...'

"No," she lamented weakly, "No, I don't."

She didn't. Couldn't and yet her thumbs rubbed inside the lip of the sink, wanting to rub something else much more than the unyielding porcelain. She didn't love him...didn't like him, barely managed to keep herself from being sick in his presence. Princess sneered at Eve's grinning faces. The only emotion she felt for Lucas was disgust and yet her body was urging her otherwise.

How'd she nearly end up sucking her fingers after something like that?

Eveline giggled - the sound running around inside her skull. Princess squeezed her eyes shut, counting out loud, "one...two...three..." 

At ten she opened her eyes.

It was just her looking back again - no small little girl with her wet black hair, cold dark eyes, and cunning smile. With a steady breath, she ran the faucet again, cold this time, and splashed her face until she wasn't worried about galloping back out there and tonguing the stains out of his pants. 

Her nerves felt fried and her brain overloaded, but she did what she'd planned to do...it had been close, but she made it to the end.

It went as well as she could have hoped. Lucas hadn't touched her except for grabbing her ass, which was nothing compared to what she had feared he'd do. He hadn't tried to push her head down into his lap or take the boxers off. His lack of action didn't help her with the tension in her gut. She felt aroused and nauseous and feverish still.

What the fuck had she just done? It was even more apparent now, more than ever, that there was something seriously wrong with her.

It took more resolve than she'd spent convincing herself of her 'plan', to not put a hand down her boxers - his boxers - and get herself off because at the rate she was shivering it wouldn't take long. Princess grabbed the edge of the sink, hanging her head low, willing the heat and wretched desire to evaporate. It did, eventually and when she finally returned with the soggy towel she was met with a snoring Lucas who didn't even have the decency to put his limp dick back in his pants…

For fuck's sake...she’d have to touch it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you for reading! If you have the time please let me know what you thought (especially if I missed a typo along the way.) More soon!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the love I've gotten on this story, still blows my mind. Warnings: for explicit sexual content, dubious consent, and violence.
> 
> Princess fucks up.

“Wakey-wakey, princess!”

She squinted, rubbing away the haze of precious sleep with the edge of her knuckles, blissfully uncertain of the world for that short moment before she remembered where she was. When Princess finally focused her vision she exhaled quickly and withdrew back into the mattress. Lucas hung over her - the excess fabric of his hoodie touching her bare stomach. She expected a knife in her stomach, not the snarl on his face - though, which was worse she couldn't say. 

“We got some problems, you an’ me and yer lookin’ to get a right spanking if you don’t hurry the fuck up,” he got down close - the cold tip of his nose pressing hard into her own, “and quit lookin' at me. Like. That!”

Lucas ripped himself off her and flung back the covers - a wave of ice cold air tightened her skin. She gasped and hugged her knees. 

Lucas wasted no time - he snatched up her ankle, dragging her kicking and screaming off the bed. Dirt and stripped keratin wedge underneath her nails as she curled them into the cement floor, all the while he cackled like a madman out into the hallway. Unexpectedly, her fingers found purchase on the doorframe, but Lucas paused and booted her elbow until she whimpered and lost her grip. Tears of pain flooded her eyes. Her arm felt broken...it hurt. Every jostle of the ground underneath her sent crashing lightning up into her elbow, down to the tips of her fingers.

He’d found the email! She knew he had, of course, he had.

Princess yelped as her temple banged against a corner. She curled her head down into her arms; fingers tight around her injured elbow and tried desperately to avoid any road bumps as he dragged her into his surveillance room. There on the floor with a cut above her eyes bleeding freely, he left her. She could hear him typing away at his console, muttering to himself before his footsteps pounded towards her. She curled into a ball, but Lucas was stronger than her even at her best. 

“Look here,” he growled, wrapping his fingers in the tangled hair at the base of her neck. His other hand snatched up her chin, pressing her lips together as he pulled her up by the head; facing her towards the monitors. In front of her was the email pulled up, just for her. “You see this, princess. This, right here - this is what we call in-va-sion of privacy!”

“Yesh,” she managed through her pursed lips, feeling his thumb dig into her cheek, making her molars ache. 

“So! - what’s my sweet little princess doing snooping around where she ain't welcome? ‘Oh, maybe she was just worried about her dead little friend?’ Nope!” He shook her face in front of the screen. In one of the black monitors, she could see him reflected behind her. Inside the shadowed black she met his eyes - those wide, manic eyes and that parted feral grin. 

“No-no, no. My princess read every word, but for what purpose?!” Lucas swallowed thickly, grinning as he leaned in, pressing that grin to her cheek. His hot, damp breath brought sweat to her face, “What's gonna happen now? - you might be wonderin’. Hmm?!”

Princess nodded inside his all-encompassing grip. Tears leaked down her cheeks, making his grip on her chin slick but the fist stuck in her hair kept her rooted. He might snap her neck if she was lucky. But it wasn't gonna be that - it was gonna be long and tedious and painful and humiliating and-

“Tell you what. We’re gonna take a little walk. Get some fresh air - how's that sound?”

“Yesh,” she said again through her tears and her spit. If he let her go, took his time it meant more time for her to find a way around whatever he had planned for her…but if she got free, if she managed to run off how far could she get? Would Eveline let her go? No, of course, she wouldn’t. 

Either way, she was stuck here. Never dying. Always living.

For the first time in weeks she felt fresh air on her skin - in her lungs and though the sun was low, broken up by the heavy layer of trees, that too felt good. Lucas held her by the throat; his thumb pushed into the dimple above where her clavicles met. It was hard to breathe, but what she could swallow into her lungs was a blessing. The scant smell of sasanqua blossoms invaded her nostrils and couple with the sour smell coming off the swamp it made her even more lightheaded than Lucas was making her.

He dragged her, stumbling but more patient outside, than inside, of her slow pace. 

Princess tripped over a tree root, feeling her brain pulse as Lucas squeezed her neck tighter, keeping her upright as they traversed through brambles and skinny, dense trees. She shut her eyes as they walked through a mess of itchy willow drapery. Despite having bigger problems she still swiped at her arms and shoulders, swatting away bugs and moss with a sneer. It was unnerving to realize how little her kicked-in arm hurt anymore...

“You-” Lucas paused, standing with her in the middle of thick brush. His lips twitched, pulling into an open smile. He pressed a long, dirty finger to his lips, hushing her; giggling and never blinking. 

Princess nodded, unable to speak with his thumb right there at her voice box anyway. Telling her to shut her mouth wasn’t really necessary right then, but she’d have agreed with anything he said or demanded at that point. As much as she hated him and being stuck in that funhouse of his, she paled at the thought of being eaten by gators. 

She followed, his hand still around her throat, through another crop of trees until they settled in a small clearing. Under a heavy moss green, canvas net sat a dark metal can…

The airdrop, she thought. 

Lucas turned to her, grinning. Princess had enough questions bubbling up under her hand that it seemed smart now to cut off her voice. He put his finger to his lips again and she nodded, much more eagerly this time. Knowing Lucas and his correspondences it was some drug, maybe the serum spoke about. 

A breeze picked up - frigid and hard - as she watched him give the little can a short kick. It did nothing except roll under the netting. Lucas chuckled under his breath, obviously pleased. 

What had once felt nice on her skin - the cool air - had since pulled away all her body heat, leaving her with goosebumps up and down her arms, shivering. Her nipples were hard and itchy underneath the thin jersey. It was then she noticed how hot his palm was around her neck - one of the only sources of warmth out here in the middle of the damn forest. 

With wide, eager eyes Lucas suddenly pushed her backward, slapping her spine against a wall of tree bark. Princess gasped, but it got lost under his hard pressing thumb. 

Something about his eyes had changed; glazed and needle-point black. Princess wasn’t prepared for his mouth when it slid down over her lips. She inhaled in shock, forcing herself further into the tree but she couldn’t get far enough back without him following her. 

His teeth tugged at her lower lip before biting her hard enough she gasped again, jaw unhinging. Against her lips, he whispered hauntingly, “You fight me now and we both go down.”

Princess stared at him, her own eyes enlarged and fearful. The hot, slippery press of his tongue inside her mouth made her gag...and then…something dark saturated her flesh, leaked into her nerves and traveled inside her veins to her brain. Instead of Lucas’ wet, sloppy kiss making her sick it...

...it made her moan.

‘Do it!’

Princess slowly moved her hands away from her hips, found his sides and spread her fingers out over his back, dragging him in. Heat; her mind reeled. 

The hard line of his chest pressed her breasts flat against her ribs. A sick curling need fueled her lips as they opened, sucking on his tongue like a lewd imitation of a cock. The soft groan she heard in her ears came from her own throat. So. Fucking. Wrong. But she’d felt nothing but pain and disgust for so long and this pleasure - instant gratification - was addicting. Like a hit of dope to her brain. 

Princess tipped her head up and sighed as Lucas tasted the inside of her mouth with all the heat and effort of slow, sliding lava.

Eve was in her head, massaging the lobes of her brain - the instigator, but the rest was all Princess. She couldn’t blame everything on the girl. After all, when Lucas tugged the boxers down off her hips it wasn’t Eveline that kicked them off her ankles, it was her. She, Princess, lifted herself up into his hands, crossed her legs around his hips and dug her heels into his pants, helping push them down until they fell around his ankles.

Her heart was pounding in her throat. Lucas bit and sucked her tongue until a river of drool was cooling in the breeze on her chin. Disgusting, a little voice seethed. She was too far gone to realize it was the last little piece of herself - of her true self that vanished at the hot, moist air between Lucas and herself.

The warm slice of discomfort as he shoved his cock inside her forced her throat open - an animal sound ripping out of it.

As he fucked her she scratched a line, deep and wet across the back of his scalp, fisting his shirt in the center of his back. 

Hard bark bruised into her shoulder blades, cutting into the small of her back where the jersey had ridden up but it was all part of the fast, dangerous road to the end. Every burning slide of skin, lubricated in sweat and sex, made her grunt and growl, baring her teeth as his kisses turn into hard teeth latched tightly against her jaw. She could feel his grin; hear his breathless cackles.

Lucas pinned her there on that tree with his cock shoved up within her, making deep shallow and erratic thrusts between her thighs. The jolt of each motion swam up and squeezed her heart, twisting it until it felt like it was about to explode. Instead of bursting in a mess of internal bleeding, Princess swallowed a hard breath and saw an explosion of red. She saw flames blazing in the sky, flying through the tree limbs before engulfing the both of them and then she came - her insides strangling him. 

“Ooh, princess!” he hollered; rolling his hips up with a violent edge, “feel that little pussy all a’ quiver! What about we go for another? I could do this-”

“Shut up,” she growled, hearing her own voice but not recognizing it and not giving a fucking damn as the constant slippery slide of his dick left her on the path to another orgasm. 

She glared past the red in her eyes and clung to his back, feeling the flare of his shoulder bones and the hard working muscles crisscrossing his ribs. Thin, corded strength and she curled her fingers into him as if they'd leech that power from him. 

Princess sucked in a breath, ready for it when it came. Her body went stiff; curling and suffocating the life out of him as pleasure and pain and something bordering on pure bliss condensed and expanded in her gut. 

It was better than the first. The pleasure slid down to the tips of her toes and out through her limbs to her fingers. Better than anything she'd felt before. 

With his teeth hovering over her cheek, she felt Lucas snarling as he kept fucking and fucking and shoving her harder and deeper into the tree until fat tears ran down her face and she hated him more than she'd ever thought she could hate anything. 

“Harder,” she hissed, hearing his shirt rip as she clawed at it, unable to stop squirming against him. Her body burned - the need was unbearable. Lucas, under her demands - forced out between her gnashing teeth - fucked her harder. It was her holding the leash now, and like a wild supplicant, he did as she told him. 

“Stop, baby.” And he stopped, gulping down frightful breaths; his knees quivering. 

“Faster-now you fucking bastard!” Lucas just grinned in response and howled like a wolf, licking a long line up her throat as he did as he was told. 

“Harder-harder-fuck me until you're bleeding...” and Princess got to feel what it was like to roll around in cum and blood for the first time; loving and hating it in equal measure. Lucas followed her instructions to the letter until he was laid out over dead leaves and rotten vegetation, getting fucked with a wild, shit-eating grin splitting his face as he held her tits in his hands. 

Princess was too far gone by that point to notice how he reached for that metal canister...how it hissed when he unlocked it or what he pulled out as she rolled and shook above him; forever and truly lost. 

\----------------------------------------

Princess came to, staring at dark moving earth underneath her. Her dirty nails curled loosely in front of her as she saw the heel of a sneaker kicking up dead leaves. Lucas was carrying her over his shoulder. She could feel the breeze against her bare ass...swore she could feel that primal slick of cum still between her thighs as she was jostled up and down as he stepped over roots and rock. A painful groan left her throat as all the little bruises and cuts started to throb before they healed. 

A little river of blood ran down the bend of her arm, seeping from a tiny hole right over a bulging vein. She could barely see it, but it was there. The sun was gone and the moon was up. It must have been fat and full...because she made out the initials ‘L.B.’ written in sharpie on the bottom of Lucas’ sneaker. Princess blinked slow and sluggish as she watched his heels while they moved through the woods.

She tried not to think about what happened out there…against the tree and on the ground - inside her body and her mind. He'd planned it. Somehow…and maybe they both had, Lucas and Eveline. No, she had to stop thinking about it. It wasn't her. There was no way she would have done that in a sober state of mind. She was intoxicated via something...it wasn't her. 

Princess tensed as Lucas began to hum in good cheer. 

She brought her palms up to her face, took in a large gulp of air and sobbed - loud and long and desperately. The hand Lucas had on her spine slipped to her rear, cupping and squeezing the soft flesh. 

“Come on now, princess. Yer alive right? That's all that fuckin’ matters,” he laughed - she could hear the grin on his face, “Me an’ you? We're gonna make history.”

Of that, she wasn't so sure, but eventually, her tears ran dry and she hung across his shoulder on that dizzying line between sleep and wakefulness. Time sped up and before she realized it they were back in the barn and she was falling back into a pile of stale hay. It reeked but she couldn't find the energy to care. 

The monsters were gone. Princess couldn't see them but she could hear them, snorting and gurgling. Not far away then, she realized. It wasn't as though they'd eat her, but she didn't feel strong enough to bat them away should they come at her sniffing. 

Lucas appeared on her right, staring into her eyes with his mouth wide open like a dumb fucking ape. She frowned - tried to push him away but that didn't work. When he took her face in his hand to turn her towards him, she didn't resist. There was something wrong with him or her, she wasn't sure who or what or-

He stabbed the knife in her arm, between bone and straight through until she could hear the crunch of hay under the steel blade. It happened so quickly she was struck dumb for a few seconds; eyes flipping from him to the knife before the pain set in. 

“Fuck!” She screeched, kicking up her legs to thrust him back but he just hiccuped with laughter and fell on top of her, forcing himself between her thighs. The position brought back memories; sloppy heated moments better burnt away. Scratchy cotton pushed up along the slippery flesh of her cunt - it was hard to think of anything else but that and the pain. 

“Shhh-sh-shhh...keep quiet. I told you to hush now, didn't I? We wouldn't want her comin’ back before the grand finale,” the low tone of his voice cut her whimpering down by half. The absurdity of it was confusing enough to take away some of the pain. Lucas lifted her skewered arm, eyeballing it in detached curiosity - it was already trying to reject the knife. Blood dribbled off it in clean long runs. 

Not black? Suddenly their expressions matched as they both looked at her arm. 

When he pulled the knife out of her flesh it made her cry, but she didn't scream. Princess tasted blood on her tongue as she bit her lip to hold back the noises warring in her throat. Still no black. 

Ten seconds in and the bleeding stopped, thirty seconds down and the cut fused and after a minute it had scabbed over and flaked, leaving a clean pink line behind. It was nothing new. They'd both hacked each other up nearly to bits and the process was always the same...the time would change depending on the severity of it but never the process. 

“Well, I'll be damned!” He hollered, then bit his lower lip with a heavy grin, “Hehe, almost forgot we gotta be all hush-hush about this. So, how's my Princess feelin’ about immortality?”

Princess frowned, bending her arm as the scar started to go silver, “...are we not already?”

Lucas pressed her arm back over the hard hay and dug his elbows in beside her - the full length of his body flattened over hers. 

He kissed her mouth again, too quick for her to pull away, because the next second he was rolling off her with a high sound, digging around in his pockets with barely contained excitement. His shoulders were shaking with mirth. It was almost infectious. 

At any rate, her curiosity won out over self-sufficiency. Princess leaned over to see Lucas toying with what looked like an epi pen…

The river of blood on her arm, she remembered, immediately looking to the bend of her arms. Of course, the little pin prick would be gone but she sat there and knew - he'd used her as his guinea pig. He'd stuck her with it while she'd laid dazed across him...she could barely remember it. 

It was because of the serum he brought her outside. But how and why? What about Eve? What, she thought, with fear-sweat pooling over her skin, would Eveline do to them now?

The fucking asshole, he could have at least let her in on it...if anything at least to save his own ass should she give something away. But what else did she expect? Surely as much as he enjoyed the perks of having a ‘girlfriend’ she was disposable. For some reason, as absurd as it was, it hurt her feelings to realize that. 

Lucas let out a sigh as he shoved the plunger into his hip. As skinny as he was she was surprised he'd found a place with enough meat there to even administer an injection like that. 

“Now,” he exhaled, falling back to stare up at the thatched ceiling with what looked to be a nearly normal expression of relaxation, “I know yer a good actress when ya wanna be, so this is how we're gonna play our little game. Eve’s gonna expect us to keep up our hot and heavy...charade - so, you wanna live? - then you gotta play. You don't play and I'll slather you in them fresh guts and feed ya to the hounds.”

Princess sat up, watching him stare at her upside down; lips parted and eyes still just as wide and crazed...and yet she felt like she was looking at a different person. 

“You down to play, princess? - or are we gonna have problems?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, holding her knees in her palms, unsure about most everything but certain she wasn't ready to give up just yet.

“I'm down…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you have the time, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think. If you see any typos let me know - it's just me trying to beta my own work, which is much harder than it sounds. More on the way!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to MimiRoar, AussiesAreAggro, nnoiffu and Person for their comments and to all those that left kudos. It's much loved and appreciated!
> 
> Warnings: for dubious sexual content, physical and verbal abuse, and violence.
> 
> He could have just left her, Princess realized. He could have traded her in for a new model but for some reason he kept her around...

When Princess agreed to act in a role she was ill-suited for, she hadn’t thought about much else but rolling with the punches. Survival being at the forefront of her mind at the time. 

Another part of her - a large part that readily agreed to comply - was just thankful she wasn't the same person who had graciously allowed and encouraged Lucas Baker to fuck her into a tree. Princess had been close to the precipice of hell. She'd seen the apocalypse of her own person as it devolved into chaos just as he had done. Now she was Herself again; still Princess, always that, but not consumed by that cloying need for primal sustenance which had led her to slip around in Lucas’ lap like a psychopath on the quest for another and another. 

Always another. 

But not anymore. Not ever again, hopefully. No more did she feel Eveline pulling her strings. It was unnerving the first few days, she admitted. It was as if she’d lost someone close and dear to her, but that was something Lucas had called ‘retarded’ when she mentioned it once while he was trying to talk his way under her jersey again. Calling her a dumb fuck hadn't gotten him very far...not that anything would have. He'd made a mistake curing her if he thought it'd grant him more of what happened in the woods. She was grateful to him - she was, but if he'd wanted an eager sex slave then curing her was the last thing he should have done.

As much as she hated to admit it, his words rang true. It was dumb - it was stupid and silly and pointless to worry about any of it. This was life now.

Lucas was her life now or at least she revolved around him as though he was. Princess looked for differences when she could. He'd changed little...at least on the outside. 

Sometimes if she squinted at him when they were alone she could see the discrepancies - his eyes had stopped weeping that gunk that had made them so glassy. He slept more than an hour a night and though she didn't care for his arm around her that one evening as he joined her in bed, it was reassuring to know he hadn't always been the man she detested. 

Sometimes he actually resembled a normal guy. Another thing she'd begun noticing was the fleeting traces of physical contact - not violent or sexual. They were things no one else would have noticed had they been living with a sane person, but more than once she'd startled to find him rubbing her skin for no other reason but because he wanted to. 

A thumb brushing the hollow of her ankle when he was typing code on his keyboard. Fingers in the ends of her hair; teasing and not ungentle. His nose wafting moist air against her shoulder as he slept. 

Small things like that which seemed big compared to their previous quarrels of knives and violence. What they experienced now was muted almost. It was strange, but not unwelcome and it wasn't as though his touches were all that endearing. He sweated in his sleep which made her feel gross and sticky...his thumbs were lined with calluses and he'd never, not once, played with her hair and not come away with some for himself.

Even though she denied it, he didn't look as unattractive as before now that some color had come back to him. The bags were still etched underneath his eyes, probably forever and his manic grins and laughter hadn’t changed. It was so authentic she couldn’t tell if it was part of his ploy or not. At any rate, he fooled Eveline flawlessly. 

But what about her? To Princess, every moment with Eve in the room felt like an eternity. Most times she'd just reach out for Lucas; wrap her arms around him and if his mouth wasn't free then she'd toy with the skin of his neck with teeth and tongue until they were alone again. It left her...unfulfilled when the curtains closed - but the emptiness was nothing like what she'd felt out in the woods. If her body had to remain confused by what it was doing then so be it - she could ignore it and when she couldn't...well...Lucas never bothered her if she said she was going to the bathroom. Princess could and had dealt with her stupid body after the serum and she'd do it again when she needed to.

Her biggest concern, after realizing Eveline bought the act easier than she would have thought, was what if Princess got caught up in the lie - too deceived by the game they played. Lucas didn’t really think she was a good actress - he couldn’t unless he believed himself so irresistible that her reactions to him during their more intimate encounters were almost genuine. They weren’t. He had to know that to some degree...and yet when Eve vanished and she pulled away, instead of making his humiliating jokes or coping a fleeting squeeze...he acted...odd.

When Eveline was around Princess channeled that unhindered, selfish desire, and she did it well enough. Princess did it now as she sat with Lucas in a one-seater draped in an old crochet blanket with the rest of his family huddled in the den. 

As the television read out the evening news, Princess ran her nails through the short hairs on the back of Lucas’ neck with her legs laid out over his lap, licking her lips in a show.

If it wasn't for the bloodstains on the floor and his father's imposing state, they might have looked like a normal family watching TV. The American dream, she thought absentmindedly. 

“Ya feel that there, princess?” Lucas mumbled against her neck, his fingers spread over her thigh, turning her backside down into his hips where his dick was stiffening. They pretended to listen for the news updates - the missing people the Baker's had down in the basement - but Lucas had been taking advantage of her attention more than usual. Princess felt her lips twitch downwards as he gave her flesh a hard squeeze but kept the edges curled. It shouldn't have been surprising given all she'd been through but the fact that he was sporting a boner with his mother several feet away confounded her...

This was the closest she'd been with him in the week since they'd dosed...except for those two nights he'd slept next to her.

“They ain't found nothin,” His father muttered, smacking a well-worn baseball bat in his palm. He did it over and over and over until she couldn’t tell the difference between the thick pulse of her heart and the slap of aluminum on flesh. 

This was the first time she’d been brought out to one of their ‘family get-togethers’ and she hated every fucking second of it. Between Lucas and his exploitative affections and the general manic tension in the air, Princess could see herself having a heart attack from the stress...if she could die that is.

“That’s jus’ for yooo…” His hot breath tickled the fine hairs at the base of her neck; making her fingers twitch underneath the hoodie over his head. The stiff pulse of Lucas’ cock underneath her as he flexed his stomach muscles tempted her to take a bite out of his neck.

Lucas grunted into her ear, fingers sliding around her thighs to the inner flesh, just about ready to...

“Lucas! You be a gentleman now, you hear,” his mother hushed; sugar sweet and darling even though her eyes were stretched in hidden pleasure.

From beside the television, Jack looked over at her and Lucas, at first with disgust and then something almost like sick pride. Princess let out a long, steady breath, counted to three and twisted in Lucas’ lap. She felt his dick, heard him wheeze, just before she brushed her lips along the side of his mouth with a fake, blissful sound. 

With Eveline sitting weakly on the overstuffed sofa, covered in thin skin and sunken eyes, it was important to hang over Lucas as if she enjoyed his lewd displays, so when he gave her a hard kiss Princess swallowed it up with a low moan. 

Times like these she was sure he relished the situation they found themselves in. Lucas was having fun at her expense - at the rest of his family and at the expense of Eveline the most, maybe. Even old and wrinkled - she looked happy enough. Her lips twitched in honest smiles when something domestic occurred. It was almost sad and Princess nearly found herself empathizing with her, if not for what she’d done to her and the Baker’s...and would keep doing until something or someone stopped her.

Princess had lost a part of herself out there amongst the vegetation, alone with Lucas...and as the days went by she was starting to forget what it was but maybe if Lucas’ plan went off without a hitch there’d be some sort of justice.

Against her, Lucas vibrated with barely contained laughter. Warm puffs of breath leaked down her chin, into the jersey he still insisted she wear for him and with a long smile, Princess gave his twitching lower lip a careful lick. He tasted sour, but it was better than blood or cum and so when he bared his teeth in a large grin and worked his tongue inside her mouth, she didn’t mind the explosion of flavor on her palette. Could always be worse, she mused, flattening her palm over his chest, curling her nails along his scalp and moaning quietly as the world raced on around her.

“You know better than that, boy! Go on!” A hard kick to the chair rattled her enough her nails cut into Lucas’ skin...deep enough she felt blood well up.

“Get yer ass back to the barn and take that slut wit’ you. Yo’ Mama don’t need to see that,” Jack doled out within the hard light of the TV set; baseball bat aimed out across the end table, pointing towards the door.

Princess kept her lips pressed against Lucas’ prickly chin as he snarled and lifted his knee, kicking out the table across from them. Princess felt her heart stop as the empty beer bottles fell and rolled off onto the hardwood floors. 

All eyes turned to them…

Fucking hell, Lucas, she cursed silently. Moments like these she realized there had been something wrong with him before Eveline...something the infection just enhanced. 

Even Mia, who’d been lingering along the wall with a dazed expression of sadness, was looking at them with bright eyes. That feeling of being hidden inside the act vanished while she sat in Lucas’ lap, jostled by his heavy wild breathes. His eyes were alight with rage; something disturbing enough to make Princess forget he’d taken the same serum she had. 

If only to keep him from losing another arm, Princess held his throat in her palm as she whispered against his jaw, “Lucas...baby, why don’t you take me back, please?” - and when he didn’t seem phased by that she pressed herself deeper into his lap and gasped, “I’m so wet…don't you wanna feel?”

“Don’t...be...mean, Lucas,” Eveline simpered weakly on the couch, hanging her head until her chin hit her sternum; pouting. Princess swallowed a hard lump in her throat but didn’t move a muscle aside from that. Lucas was still tense but she’d felt that long twitch underneath the back of her thigh and knew she had him.

“Oh! Look!” Lucas’ mother shrieked, pointing at the television screen with a gaping smile, “It’s what’s-his-name! The one in the shed! Jack-Jack look’it...oh, what’s his name again?!”

"How the hell am I supposed to know that, Marguerite. One of them city boys no doubt. He ain't the one." 

With the attention shifted away from them, Lucas leaned back into the recliner, looking like a man who’d done something wrong and been rewarded for it.

Figures. She’d put her foot in her mouth when all she needed to do was wait it out. The Baker’s sorted their problems out either by blood or short attention spans...and now she’d worked Lucas up for no reason. His thumb was sliding along the meat of her thigh when their eyes met.

Princess frowned. Her face was hidden from all but him - so, with a lick of her lips, she mouthed ‘fuck you’ at him. 

His eyebrows raised, mouth parting into a wide smile. Lucas pinched her hip in lieu of a response, but the message was clear enough. If he found any opening he'd take it. The bastard was enjoying immortality - was having fun pretending he had a girlfriend, but most of all she knew he was getting off on his - so far - successful machinations.

She was sick with worry all the way back to the barn.

Lucas took great pleasure in keeping his fingers hooked in the back belt loop on the shorts she wore - the ones he'd stolen from his sister's room the morning before. She didn't mind that they were too tight around her thighs, only that Lucas couldn't keep his hands out of them. Pockets, loops or the hems - it didn't matter, he wouldn't or couldn't keep his fingers to himself. Maybe she’d cut them off just to spite him, though that seemed like an snort threat. 

When they got to the wooden stairs, instead of squeezing her tits or pushing his boner into her ass he shoved her up the rest of the stairs and giggled. 

“Yoo-you just crawl on up there, princess. Sit tight you hear? I got some business to take care of on the other side of town.”

Princess paused on the center stair, looking back at him with a frown, “...you can," she stuttered, "S-she lets you leave?”

“Well, sure,” he smiled; devious and wide, “where'd you think I got yer panties from?”

His sister, she wanted to say but bit her tongue. Despite the brand his dick had left on her rear, he seemed to be in a good mood and that meant less for her to worry about.

“In that case, pick me up a razor,” she mentioned, ascending the stairs. His eyes hit her like a burn, watching her ass as she stepped up the stairwell. Let him look, she thought, aiming a middle finger down at him before disappearing around the second story wall. If he wanted it he'd have to take it by force. 

“Oh-wee!...you sure are somethin’ else, princess! Don't go changing!” From the landing, she could hear him hacking up laughter left and right, but she felt better rebelling when she could, no matter how minor it seemed. Or how much it amused him.

Lucas didn't return until four hours later while she was half asleep draped over the edge of his bed, their bed...whatever it was now. 

Princess didn't have to look to know he was fuming. Only when he dropped something heavy on the floor did she pull her head up from the rumpled sheets to spare him a cursory glance. Past the messy strands of her hair, she spied a large duffel bag in the middle of the floor. Curiosity was an enemy here, and yet fear was fleeting these days, “...what's that suppose to be?” 

Lucas kicked the leg she had hanging off his bed until she pulled it up over the edge with a pained groan. So much for good moods...

“Oh! Oh-ho-hoo, now she's payin’ fucking attention. ‘Lucas! Ooh, baby, whatcha got there?!’ Where’s my welcome home kiss, hmm? What about ‘Sweetheart! Com'er and give me ah smooch!’ No?! Well, I'll tell you what I got here...”

Princess startled momentarily, looking from him to the green duffel until a huge, face-splitting grin made her skin itch. “Well?” She demanded.

“Ya know,” he grinned, planting a knee down on the mattress. The dip and scream of the box spring made her stomach flip. Since the serum, she'd gotten too cocky; running a thin line between a good girl and a bad one. 

Lucas crawled steadily towards her, looking fiendish with his hood up, casting shadows inside his hard cheekbones and eye sockets, “I always wanted to blow my load down a girls throat, maybe when yer done being a sassy little bitch you can do the honors. You know! - take one for the team!”

Princess blinked, listening for an absent Eve before driving her fist into his face. He darted back, barely missing it and whistled. He was still smiling as he lunged at her, slamming her back into the mattress. They wrestled together as he emitted choking peels of laughter, holding her wrists in his hands. She got a knee between his legs but the air that gushed out of his mouth was all that got her. 

“I've missed this,” he growled. That deep, drastic rumble in his throat made her sweat. He hadn't instigated a fight in nearly a week and the pain that shocked her jaw as his elbow smacked into her while they fumbled and fell to the floor was staggering. 

'Fu’uck-Lucas!" she shouted, pressing the back of her hand to her face. Fresh tears of pain welled up in her lashes and spilled as he tangled a fist in her hair, churning her neck to the side so he could get his other hand up around her throat; his arm wrapped around her chest, trapping her limbs against her sides. Against her shoulder blade, she could feel his heart pounding. 

“You got me ree-al worked up back there ya know. Oh, yes - you been a bad-bad-baaad girlfriend. Leading me on and hanging me out to dry,” he snorted breathes inside the crook of her shoulder. The dust from the floor itched inside her nose as she struggled to breathe under his weight. 

His wet lips split over the thin polyester jersey and Princess was shocked when he asked, in a low, hard voice, “...can I kiss that sweet pussy of yours, princess? Promise you, I won't bite.”

Out of the blue, they both heard the wet gurgle of Eveline’s heart beat, but Lucas didn't let her go, just pulled her with him as he sat on his ass, legs spread across the floor. Princess swallowed around his palm as he rested her between his legs, back against his chest.

Eve - childish once again - skipped in across the floor, with Jack at her heels. 

Princess looked up with tear tracks running down her cheeks, sprinkled with grit off the floor and what must have been a bright red blossom on her jaw from Lucas’ boney elbow. Despite the pain and the bulge pressing into her spine she grinned neurotically at the both of them. 

She was too spooked to wonder what they were doing there but behind her, Lucas grumbled, “Ah, fuck! - what is it now? I'm kinda in the middle of something here!”

Jack frowned - the bat which had been blood free earlier was now stained in browns and reds.

“Yer Mama wants you to come down fer supper. She's cookin’ somethin’ real special for a new ‘member of the family and my baby girl needs her brotha’ there at the table. You can leave that one here.”

Jack pointed the dented, greasy end of the bat at her - the fluorescents coated his cracked glasses in white, obscuring his eyes from her. Princess watched two drops of blood drip off the end and land on the floor, creating star splatters…

Leave her here, please, she thought as Eveline swayed in her dress and bare feet; a smile hidden under long black hair. She came as the girl again, not the wrinkling skeleton she was. What that meant, Princess wasn't sure.

Lucas hugged her close, squeezing her neck as a goodbye before shoving her aside to brace against the floor on her palms. Princess stared at the floor with wide eyes as Lucas gave her ass a hard spank before climbing up to his feet. Son of a bitch...how fucking demeaning

“What kinda goddamn moron would wanna snoop around this filthy fucking place? I bet they're more urban retards come to look for ghosts and shit?”

“Watch yer language, boy. This one's family.”

Eveline’s smile stretch as she took Jack’s hand to which the old man smiled...almost warmly.

“Come on, Lucas," she called, "Princess will play with you later and Daddy’s waiting.”

\----------------------------------------

“Booo-hoo, Ethan. Let’s not start whining already! The party's juss’ started,” his lips curled, “Make it out alive and I’ll let you have the biggest slice of the cake!” 

Lucas gripped the microphone in his fist, his legs kicked up on the desk as he erupted in laughter. When he turned his manic eyes in her direction Princess stared over the edge of an Archie comic. She’d read the damn issue nearly a dozen times already but it was one of the only things she could focus on that didn’t remind her of reality - an escape, no matter how minuscule. One of her biggest fears now was slipping too far into the game - of getting absorbed into a role she’d regret when this was all over. Ever since the newest family member had run off after dinner her world had devolved into explosives and Lucas’ arousal for trickery. 

Her fingers were smeared with gunpowder, leaving residue on each corner page of the comic. 

“Just make it to the end! It ain't so hard!” He crooned into the microphone. 

And end soon it would if Zoe and Mia had anything to say about it. Princess secretly hoped they’d complete their end goal, even if it didn’t include her. Someone deserved to get out of this crazy place. Sure, she’d remain with Lucas as he took his sweet time feeding Mr. Orange all the dirt he could until whatever he was hoping to accomplish was done...and maybe she'd die on the end of one his ploys but things could be worse. 

“Haa-ah! Just remember now - noooo cheating!”

All of his surveillance monitors were up in all their humming glory. Each one positioned for perfect viewing pleasure as Lucas watched in rapture as his latest victim tried to unravel his puzzle. She knew how it worked. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen someone make a run through it, or...more like try to make a run through. The finale was always the same. By now the cake room was permanently scorched...not exactly subtle for whoever the next victim would be. Princess had to admit, out of all the games she’d watched Lucas play this one made her stomach churn the least. 

‘Fuck you!’ the man screamed through the speakers. 

Lucas laughed and Princess looked over her shoulder to see Eve staring at the monitors with narrowed eyes. She was like a black stain in the room...

“Hey, Eveline,” she greeted, letting her teeth show in a wide, open grin. Even with Princess’ poor acting - sweating with nerves half the time - Eveline lapped it up with dark smiles and phantom hugs.

“He should just kill him. I don’t like him anymore,” Eveline said.

Princess shrugged, feeling her forehead grow damp under Eveline's bright eyes. The man, Ethan, wouldn't last long if Lucas had anything to do with it. Soon she'd get her way, just as she always did.

“Hang on, now. That ain’t right!” Lucas snarled, tapping his sneakers to the happy birthday tune even though his fists were curled on the desk - veins throbbing around his knuckles. Princess watched blondie place the candle on the cake, watched it blow up and then...nothing else. 

“Motherfucker! That’s not how this game works, Ethan!” 

A slow, sadistic smile stretched along the small, sharp line of Eveline’s face as they watched Lucas race across the room in his chair and punch the failsafe button. On the screen, she saw the fabled bundle of dynamite drop down into the room.

That also didn’t work out as planned. Ethan slipped into the blind spot on the cameras with the dynamite in his hands and Princess felt her stomach twist. 

In seconds, the wall exploded at her back, sending her wide-eyed across the room. Wet, hot rain ran down the back of her neck and she felt air inside her skull. Princess shook as she reached around and with shaking fingers to feel a piece of her head gone.

A cursed ‘fuck’, unhindered by the static of a speaker system filtered in through the walls as her vision tunneled. 

"God dammit!" Lucas shouted, but it was a messy sound; distorted by blood running out her ears and her brain chugging along on empty. The pain wasn't so bad...but this other...empty...feeling. 

Princess watched through the residue of dust as Lucas' sneakers filled her darkening vision. Just leave her, she thought blearily. Let her finally die. 

But no. In her ear, Lucas was snarling. 

He snatched her up around her ribs and tossed her over his shoulder; bells and dust in her brain. Everything happened in a slideshow. Princess watched the floor as it turned from cement to wood to grass. Lucas and the green duffle bag - she'd almost forgotten about that - ran them through the barn, past piles of broken leaking monsters and into the cold night air. And where was it Lucas had planned for them to hide when the shit hit the fan? The only place he knew no one would think he'd be dumb enough to go. 

The mines, her brain supplied before it finally...finally died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading. If you have the time please let me know what you think of this. It's much appreciated. <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See tags for warnings. 
> 
> Lucas was unpredictable, yes, but at least Princess could count on his unpredictability to be...well, predictable.

“Come on, Princess!”

She gasped awake - her cheek stinging hotly and Lucas kneeling above her with his palm raised between them. He’d slapped her.

Everything was dark but she could see him clearly enough with the headlamp wrapped around his forehead. His eyes were bulging wide, glassy as they slipped wetly around her. Princess blinked sluggishly, unable to move but to lick her lips in thirst. That slick, bitter residue of whatever they kept in those green bottles came away on her tongue. Guess bashing his brains in wouldn’t have killed him, she thought. She was alive, after all.

“Hey!” he snapped his fingers loosely in front of her. Princess twitched and blinked again. She must have dozed off for a second or two. Inside her skull, her eyes ached, trying to squint away the bright white light shining on her face.

“Hey-hey! Come on, wakey-wakey sleepy head. I ain't done wit’ you yet.”

When she ignored him and let her eyes rest too long, he delivered another hard slap - the force throwing her head to the side. The movement brought a hard line of electric pain up from the base of her neck to the middle of her head. It felt like millions of skinny worms pulsing inside her head...but those must have been veins or neurons...she never paid much attention to anatomy in college. Did the brain have veins in it? It must, right? What supplied the brain with oxygen otherwise?

Lucas shoved a hand under her back, pulling her upright. Every movement hurt. The pain was so encompassing and strange she couldn’t think much past it, but Lucas wasn’t patient and that piercing agony in her ears wasn’t a byproduct of brain damage - it was an alarm blasting. 

Why hadn’t he just left her behind? Surely whoever they were fleeing to, Mr. Orange she guessed, would have given him a new chew toy to play with. Expendable, she remembered realizing when she’d come to in the barn, over the hay as the serum cleared her head. Obviously, she was part of something bigger than Lucas’ sexual fantasies, though those by themselves were not small things.

“It hurts…” she whimpered, feeling sick and close to vomiting. The darkness around them was heightening her senses; making the pain all that more lucid. 

“Well, no shit,” he grumbled, smoothing a hand around the back of her head to finger the tender bone. Princess half expected his digits to slip inside her head, but the bone was dense and solid once again. Just the insides; mushy and twitching awfully.

“I’ll be damned, princess. Hehe-haa! Yer hair even grew back! Good thing too, you just ain’t got the bone structure for short hair.”

“...fucker,” she wheezed, but for some reason, her lips quivered around a smile. He was a distraction from the pain and the alarm and whatever it was happening around them. In a mass of unrelenting pain, it was his deliberate touch on her scalp that provided a beacon within the cruel sea of it.

The slow, soft shuffle of the monsters formed an orchestra almost on par with the loud beeping. They were everywhere even if it were too dark to see them. 

“I'm gonna need you to get yer’self together,” he told her, lips stretched thin but curled, “We’re...kinda on a time limit and as much as I'd miss our heavy pettin’ yer gonna need to get skippin’ or I'll leave you behind. You got me?”

A part of her wanted to shove his hands away, let herself fall back against the hard ground and wait for whatever fate had in store, but the desire to live was a strange thing. Princess stretched her fingers out, found the warm familiar fabric of his hoodie and gripped it hard. She was too much of a pussy to die alone.

“Slap me,” she whimpered.

Through the halo of light, she saw the smile on Lucas’ face widen; saw the gleam of his teeth before he tipped her head down and backhanded her. She gasped and inhaled against the sharp sting and rapidly blinked away some of the haziness. 

“...again,” she groaned. And with a hiccup of laughter, Lucas did it again and then once more before she was able - with his help - to stumble up to her knees and eventually her feet. He pressed a bottle of water to her chest as she leaned back along a railing, catching her breath as she guzzled it down. 

God, but the pain was everywhere. She swallowed half the bottle before she felt like she could move properly and thankfully by that time Lucas had finished tightening the last trip line on his explosives. The duffle bag hanging over his shoulder was still full even though she spotted four traps running down the line of scaffolding.

Only once had he mentioned the mines out loud, but obviously she'd never been - didn’t even know if they were actual mines or some clever nickname for a bunker. Standing in it now brought to light their shared situation. From what she'd read of Lucas’ emails that one night, the company Mr. Orange worked for didn't seem much safer than Lucas...maybe worse.

One night she'd dreamt they were shoving tubes into her chest - faceless doctors with executives behind them, tapping their watches with deep-set frowns. At least with Lucas she had a relative amount of predictability. He liked her as much as she figured a man like him could like another person...she'd have none of that if things went awry with this company. 

It was advantageous to her to stick with Lucas - to, maybe, keep him from turning her over to a bunch of corporate shitheels. She'd read enough Philip K. Dick novels to know what shady companies did in order to get a leg up on their competition and if they saw a key in her they'd do worse and more than Lucas ever could. It didn't escape her concern that they could turn around and do the same to Lucas...though, he’d more than likely already planned for that possibility. 

“Pick up the pace - I ain't got all night!”

Princess stumbled forwards, following the bobbing light attached to his head. She was only a few feet behind but somehow never close enough. 

The mines were composed of dilapidated buildings and shafts - she caught glimpses of them as Lucas followed a set path through the maze. She wondered if she'd die should the ceiling cave in on her or would she just keep on chugging along despite being pinned and trapped for fucking ever. Thoughts of worst-case scenarios somehow kept her from pausing for breaths and eventually, the clinical, moldy smell of an air-conditioned room was cooling the sweat on her skin. Metal cooled under her bare, raw feet.

A red, rotating beacon filled up the room every few seconds. Coupled with the unrelenting sound of the alarm, Princess felt like she was in a waking nightmare.

“Ooh, baby…” Lucas slurred somewhere from across the room. He was pulling cables and his laptop out of the duffle bag he’d tossed on a long metal table. She spared him a quick look as he started undoing ports and setting himself up. After a minute the emergency light died, leaving her alone with only Lucas’ headlamp keeping away the cold murk.

Carefully, she walked towards him, feeling along the floor with her toes for unseen roadblocks. Before she could reach him, the room flickered and the telltale hum of electricity started up. The room went from a black phantasm to a haunting glow of white and blue lights. It looked much like a lab but there was too much for her healing brain to take in. Princess sat beside the duffle bag, legs crossed on the table with her head in her palms as Lucas stomped around the room.

It seemed in her best interest to stay out of his way while he did whatever it was he had to. Princess watched him as her headache abated; his shoulders were hunched over as he moved back and forth in front of her. With each pass, another screen would come online.

Beside her, his laptop screeched.

“Lucas…” she muttered, trying to get his attention as he stopped beside a dead terminal; cables draped over his shoulder like rock climber's rope. Lucas licked his lips, as he got the hunk of metal to sputter to life. Before he passed her again she reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, hissing his name again, but he threw her weak grip off and started bridging strange looking electronics together.

The laptop flashed beside her…

With a careful look Lucas’ way she pulled the warm, humming computer into her lap and hit ‘ENTER’. Her picture appeared in the right corner - looking ghostly against the brightness of the screen. Blood had dried up all along one side of her face and she was pretty sure whoever it was staring back at her was disgusted by the sight of her...hell, she almost was.

“You must be Princess,” the monotone voice offered; covered in dark shades and a black suit. Typical, she frowned.

The guy looked like every shady operative she’d seen in the movies. When she didn’t respond, the man cleared his throat, smiling, “I assume based on this call going through that ‘L’ has made it to the lab. How close is he to getting the network back online?”

Princess glanced over at Lucas as he grinned and chuckled and huffed in the dust and grime. Close enough, she thought, looking back at the man on the screen. Her fingers whitened around the plastic edges as, who she could only assume was Mr. Orange, frowned at her silence.

She swallowed a lump before leaning down into the screen, whispering furiously, “...what’s the point of this...what-what are you going to do to him?” More like what were they going to do with her, but she wasn’t worth anything to them without Lucas...she had to accept that.

A barely there smirk pulled at the corners of Mr. Orange’s mouth and immediately Princess hated him more than she’d ever hated Lucas. Her obvious distress - the look of her - it must have amused the man behind the sunglasses...and she fucking loathed that.

“He hasn’t told you? My, my, my, well you certainly are not as informed as I had assumed you’d be. ‘L’ has covered all his bases then. When he’s finished with the network, please put him on with me. In the meantime, I recommend that you-”

“No!” she screamed, digging her thumbs into the screen as if she were pressing them into this assholes eyeballs, “Tell me what’s going on - right now! Why’d you cure him?! and m-m-me...and Sam! I want you to bring her back! You…” she felt the tears running down her face; saw them leaving trails in the blood and dirt on her cheeks.

Princess realized how unhinged she looked, but couldn't stop herself “...you give me Sam back...give her - give it back, please.”

Lucas appeared beside her, grabbing at her wet cheeks as she struggled and clenched her grip around the laptop harder, hearing it crack, “...nooo….stop, please! Just tell me why!”

“Shhh…” Lucas hushed her. 

“...why?” she begged and shivered as her eyes found Lucas’ through her tears. Princess sobbed as his thumbs wiped underneath her eyes, removing the fast falling tears as quickly as they came. At first, she growled at the belittling noises he used as if she were a wild, unhinged animal, but it worked. Eventually, the tears slowed down to a trickle as he hummed at her, “That’s it, princess...shh-shhhh - you go on and hush now.” 

She swallowed the phlegm from all the crying with a loud gulp and shifted her wet, sore eyes to the laptop screen again. Mr. Orange was smirking in full force now, obviously amused. Princess squeezed her eyes shut and relaxed inside Lucas’ warm, sturdy hands 

“I’m going to kill him,” she promised and whether she was talking about Lucas or the man on the laptop or both, she wasn’t sure.

“Naw-ah’haa, I don’t think so,” Lucas grinned, running his moist thumb along her lower lip, “Yer gonna sit here and look pretty until I say otherwise. Ya, hear me, princess?”

She was about to rip her face out of his palms - was about to spit at him and scream but at the last second, she saw the look in his eyes. Lucas stared at her, outside the view of Mr. Orange, with wide telling eyes and an expectant line to his mouth. Princess ran her gaze over every inch of his expression and exhaled a steady breath; nodding. He had something planned...and God damn her...she trusted him for no reason at all.

Princess sucked in her lower lip as Lucas took the laptop out of her hands, erupting in a bout of hideous laughter as the last tears stuck in her lashes fell over her cheeks, dripping coldly over her thighs.

Once again she was faced with the dilemma of not knowing if Lucas was all an act or - or if he played pretend like she did, just much, much better. 

\----------------------------------------

Princess tried to ignore the erratic sounds of Lucas and Mr. Orange talking through the laptop. If they weren’t jabbering about getting the network back online, which they had done thirty minutes ago, then it was a thousand other things. She kicked her legs up on the table, an arm draped over her eyes as she laid over the metal slab - memories of waking up to a new world in the Baker’s basement itched at her skin, but it felt so long ago and...by now it seemed more like a bad dream than reality. 

“-and about the accounts, orange pop, we need that deposit to show up before I hit this here button. Nothin’ personal, but I like all my ducks in a row. If you catch my drift.”

“Of course.” Came the professional reply. Princess peered out around her arm as Lucas spun in a squeaky computer chair; smile splitting from ear to ear. A little ‘bleep’ on the laptop got a perversely pleased noise out of him.

Lucas hissed as if wounded, “Ahh, I don’t know, partner. If shit hits the fan that ain’t gonna cover mah expenses. The girlfriend ain’t cheap!” It was all said in good humor, but Princess had a feeling he was up to something. Better for her to stay in the dark, though. She was a better actress when she had less to work with - when most of her reactions were genuine…

“Very well,” came the laptop. 

Another ‘bleep’ and Lucas threw his head back; barking with laughter, “Oh! Oooh-oh’boy! Now, that - that’s what I’m talking about, orange pop. That’s what I wanna see.”

“We aim to please, ‘L’.” 

Princess scoffed. If Mr. Orange was so eager to make Lucas happy, he ought to show up himself and prepare to spend some time on his knees…or...maybe she'd get to see him sweat through a game of twenty-one. A nasty little grin swept up her lips at the thought of watching him lose all his fingers...cook from the inside until his eyeballs exploded over his cheeks...

As Lucas laughed, she sat up on her elbows, watching him tap his sneakers in barely contained mirth.

Feeling suicidal she glared over at Lucas, “...since you're both so fucking chatty, why don’t you ask your stupid friend if I can get pregnant?” 

Princess watched with a blank expression as Lucas’ grin fell. His eyebrows shot up and then, as if remembering their time in the woods, licked his lips like a hungry dog. It wasn't as though she were really concerned with the possibility - she'd had more important things to fear but now? - now that's she'd voiced it out loud a singular little horror was wiggling inside her gut.

“Well, orange pop?” he asked, turning back to the bright screen, “Ya think we’re gonna have mini-me’s runnin’ around?” 

Lucas turned in his chair and threw a leg up on the table next to her, watching her as sounds of shuffling papers filtered in from the laptop speakers. He wagged his eyebrows, looking chummy but there was a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead that hadn’t been there a couple seconds ago.

“They...don’t mention fertility implications in their reports, but you can tell Prin-”

“I’m right here,” she spoke over him until he fell silent. A petty part of her hated having to sit here while she was mentioned offhandedly as if she wasn’t even there...as if she was an afterthought. Expendable, a voice reminded her. 

Silence filled the lab until that annoying throat-clearing sound Mr. Orange made proceeded his flat response, “I’m sure you’ll agree that you, my dear, have more pressing concerns than that.”

“Oh! Does she now?” Lucas interjected, smiling in that same frightful way he had a habit of doing before wreaking havoc, “What? - you got somethin’ you need to tell me, buddy-boi?! Got some plans of yer own?"

There was a long pause before she heard Mr. Orange sigh, “You must understand, this is a delicate situation we are in. Princess is yours, as we discussed in our correspondences, but we must focus on getting the lab’s data transferred and, more importantly, the two of you to safety before Umbrella decides to send their operatives to find you,” and, as if to add a hue of parental disapproval, the man added, “I suggest you do something with the girl, ‘L’. She’s an added distraction we can’t afford. Duct tape would do fine, I'm sure.”

Princess snarled. Once again he spoke of her - not to her and with all the shit being left unanswered it was throwing her into a vicious mood. 

Lucas giggled, “Mm-hmm...a distraction ‘you’ can’t afford. Me? I got all the time in the world and now! Hell! I got all the gold too!”

“That money won’t be…” the sudden radio silence coming from the screen made Lucas incredibly pleased. He typed a few words in on the keyboard and it made a pleasant chime, only further cementing her concern.

From the laptop came a hard, malicious voice, “Listen here, you little shit.” 

It only occurred to her as Lucas started to hum that the nearly inhuman voice coming from the laptop still belonged to Mr. Orange.

They'd been robbed. Secret agent man had been swindled by fucking Lucas Baker of all people - a person they probably thought they had in their pocket.

“We know where you are. If you think for one second we don’t have ways of getting what we-” and then Lucas slammed the laptop closed, cutting off the growing voice of a very, very unhappy man. Princess’ lips curled upwards as Lucas hiccuped with laughter until the whole lab was filled with it - until it’s all she could hear outside her own fragile pleasure. 

“Yee’haw! Feels good don’t it, princess? I tell you what, people are sooo-so stupid.”

“You played them, didn't you?” she asked; shaken. While the idea gave her a sick sense of pride and pleasure, if he just double crossed some very bad people then he was screwed and if he was screwed then so was she. Lucas’ leg twitched under her hand, but she kept her palm steady; her body language patient as he finished another round of laughter. 

“Let's just say I've secured a few, ehhhhh...assets for a trip we’re gonna be goin’ on. Those ‘other’ retards in the suits are gonna be here soon for our friend, Ethan. But me an’ you are gonna be miles away by then!”

Princess’ brows creased. Other retards? “What about those ones?” she asked, nodding her chin to the laptop in his lap. 

“Don't you worry about them. They ain't even in the same country.”

Still, she thought, trying to process all this in a short, erratic span of time. He didn't have a car, or a gun or from what she could gather even a fucking plan and there were armed men on their way?! Princess couldn't stand it anymore. 

She watched with wide, unfocused eyes as Lucas smiled to himself, tossing the sturdy laptop on the table. He went about typing in the nonsensical code on one of the monitors, oblivious or uncaring of her behind him; simmering with rage and most importantly, confusion. She'd told herself before that she was going to just follow. It was easier to assume he knew what he was doing because it seemed he did but the questions she had were too many and too large and she couldn't stop herself from fisting the back of his hoodie and twisting him around with a vicious snarl. 

“For fuck’s sake!” She shouted, reaching her fingers around to the front of his clothes to grab and strangle him but he snatched up her chin in a cruel grip, making her pause.

“Princess, I got yer answers right here,” he tapped his temple with parted lips, “but you gotta keep that pretty head of yours together. Ain't got time to play right now. And we! are on a time crunch!!” 

The idea of being in such a tight spot seemed to amuse him rather than whatever fresh hell it was she felt at the prospect, but somehow she managed to gather up her anger and shove it deep down for later. 

It wasn't until he'd shut everything down and handed her three heavy explosive charges that things began to make sense - at least compared to before. He'd secured all the data for himself and now he was going to destroy the leftovers. 

Outside it was bright with the morning sun…and it was quiet. No bird song. No nothing, except the both of them wading through the brush and moist mossy curtains. 

Brambles stuck into the soles of her bare feet and if the woods didn't try and suck the rest of her energy from her then the cold did. When the ground started to grow wet she fell back; limbs on fire. Princess decided she couldn't run anymore, but Lucas twisted around and grabbed at her arm, yanking her the last quarter mile to the docks. 

A motor boat, she thought miserably. She stared down, with the moldy wood of the pier under her feet, as Lucas tossed the green duffle in the boat. It was one of those ratty speeders with a canvas top and enough room for maybe four people total. 

Where the fuck was he taking them?

She shivered, wrapping her arms around her aching breasts before something warm touched her shoulder. Without thinking she jerked away from it, turning hard to find Lucas beside her, his hoodie in his hands; open as if he’d been about to drape it over her. The action puzzled her, brought her brows together. Lucas, for a moment, wore a look of hurt, but...that wasn't possible and it was gone, if it ever existed outside her imagination, in place of a cocksure grin. 

He pulled her arms in through the warm, musty sleeves and she let him, staring at him, waiting for his expression to expose something besides what she already knew of him.

“It'd be a cryin’ shame to let you die now. Don't you agree?!”

Princess shrugged under the large, warm fabric. She could feel her cheeks filling with blood; blushing, but she wasn't sure why. He dragged her down into the boat; pushed her on a hard metal seat and cranked the motor. The sinewy strength in his arms was a welcome distraction to the questions still running around in her newly healed skull. 

The boat ride through the early morning swamps was quiet - it was the perfect opportunity to ask him all she wanted to, but she didn't. Princess was tired. She sat there inside his clothes and held her thin waist…and wondered, what's the point?

As she felt the water glide underneath the boat and the wind beat at her nose and cheeks, she imagined waking up in a real bed, with a real boyfriend...giving her kisses and taking her to breakfast where she'd eat a hot meal and feel...normal. Princess held onto that thought as the Baker’s sprawling funhouse grew further and further away. 

It wasn't until they were leaving the dank shade of cypress crops that Lucas killed the engine. Princess looked up, pulled a curtain of hair out of her face and took in the serene view of the placed she'd lost herself. The old mining tower cut the backsplash of yellow dawn with webs of black and just over the bristle of trees, she could make out the Baker home. 

“What the-” she peered over the boat, turning her gaze up to find a trio of helicopters dotting the creamy sky...

“So, princess,” Lucas sang-sung. Her eyes drifted towards him - to the detonator suddenly in his hand. The lab, she remembered, blinking as her brain tried to put all the puzzle pieces together.

“What’da’you’say? Wanna do the honors?!” 

Lucas leaned over, close enough she could feel his hot breath warming her frozen nose as he teased her knuckles with his thumb. She stared, open-eyed and shivering as he threaded his fingers with her own - the skin-warmed detonator resting inside their palms. Princess searched his bulging eyes for something she couldn’t name, but she found it and with a daring smile she brushed the edge of the tiny button and gave it a click. 

The sky became alight in flames and red and heat, just like it did that day in the woods...against the tree...with Lucas snarling and clawing inside her. And for the first time since Jack Baker stopped Sam's van on the road that hopeless evening...Princess wasn't dreading what the future had in store.

Bring it on, she thought, sharing Lucas' hot grin as the shore sank steadily into the swamp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone that's left comments, kudos and gotten to this point. This is the last chapter until I get my hands on the DLC (which will hopefully include Lucas in some capacity, if not all). I might beg Tumblr for some prompts to play around with in the meantime because I'm still itching to write more Lucas in some manner. 
> 
> If you have the time, please leave me a comment and let me know what you thought! <3 Until next time.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr ----> http://brimbrimbrimbrim.tumblr.com/


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